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FEBRUARY 1970 



THEODORE STURG^ 

SLOW SCULPTURE 

Novelette 



THEfH 

REVIVXI 

Gerald J 



Starting in 
this issue 

SUNPOT 



Do you have 
a restless urge 
to write? 



If you do, here is an opportunity 
for you to take the first 
important step to success in writing 




BcnncU Cerf, the distinguished 
publisher, is a member of 
the (juiding Faculty of 
(he Famous Writers School. 



Tlicrc’s something different about peo- 
ple who feel the urge to write. They have 
a spiritual hunger that sets them apart — 
even from family and friends. 

If you have known this burning need 
to write, you, too, may have the gift suc- 
cessful authors possess. 

They know th;it this restless urge for 
self-expression is perhaps the most im- 
portant ingredient of writing success. 
But, they realize it can waste away if 
you don't know how to get started writ- 
ing, or if you hesitate to try. 

Several years ago a group of famous 
authors including Rod Serling, Faith 
Baldwin, Bennett Cerf, Bruce Catton, 
and several others joined forces to start 
the Famous Writers School. They poured 
everything they know about writing into 
a remarkable new kind of piofessional 
training course which trains you at home 
in your spare time. You begin with the 
fundamentals of all good writing. Then 
you get advanced training in the specially 
of your choice. 

Each of your assignments is examined 
by an instructor who is a professional 
writer or editor. He giSes over your work 
word by word, blue-penciling changes 
right on your manuscript. Then he re- 
turns it to you with a long letter of ad- 



vice on how to improve your writing. 

This training works well. Our studen 
have sold their writing to hundreds ( 
publications. 

Free Aptitude Test offered 

To find out if you, too, have writir 
ability worth developing, send for tf 
School’s revealing Aptitude Test. If yo 
test well, or offer other evidence of wri 
ing aptitude — you may enroll. Howeve 
there is no obligation to do so. 

I 

1 Famous Writers School 

1 Dept. W-4522 
I Westport Connecticut 06880 
I 1 Wcini lo know if I have writing aptitude 
I worth developing. Please mail me, 

I without obligation, your Aptitude Test 
j and illustrated brochure, 

1 Mr. 

I Mrs Age 

j Miss K'ircic luic plciisc prim] 

I Sifcci 

j City 

I Stale Zip 

j Accredited by the Accrediting Commission 
I of the National Home Study Council. 




Galaxy Is published in French, Ger- 
man, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. 
The U. S. Edition is published in Braille 
and Living Tape. 



GALAXY 
February, 1970 

Vol. 79, No. 5 



NOVElCTTfS 

THE SHAKER REVIVAL 4 

Gerald Jonas 

SLOW SCULPTURE 34 

Theodore Sturgeon 

SLEEPING BEAUTY 54 

A. Bertram Chandler 

SBRIAL (Part III) 

DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 104 

Robert Silverberg 



EJLER JAKOBSSON 
Editor 

FREDERIK POHL 
Editor Emeritus 

DONALD H. MENZEL 
Science Editor 

LESTER DEL REY 
Feature Editor 

JUDY-LYNN BENJAMIN 
Managing Editor 

FRANC L. ROGGERI 
Art Director 

JACKGAUGHAN 

Associate Art Director 



ARNOLD E. ABRAMSON 
Publisher 

BERNARD WILLIAMS 
Associate Publisher 



SHORT STORIES 

THE LAST NIGHT 

OF THE FESTIVAL 73 

Dannie Plachta 
AFTER THEY TOOK 

THE PANAMA CANAL 125 

Zane Kotker 

ILLUSTRATED FEATURE 

SUNPOT 138 

Vaughn Bode' 

FEATURES 

GALAXY BOOKSHELF 2 

Algis Budrys 

GALAXY STARS 158 



Cover by GAUGHAN, 
suggested by The Shaker Revival 



GALAXY MAGAZINE is pub- 
lished monthly by Universal Pub- 
lishing & Distributing Corpora- 
tion, Arnold E. Abramson, Presi- 
dent. Main offices: 235 East 45 
Street, New York, N.Y. 10017. 60c 
per copy. 12-issue subscription: 
$6.00 in the United States, else- 
where $7.00. Second class postage 
paid at New York, N.Y. and addi- 
tional mailing offices. Copyright 
1970 by Universal Publishing & 
Distributing Corporation under 
International, Universal and Pan- 
American Copyright Conventions. 
All rights reserved. The publisher 
assumes no responsibility tor un- 
solicited material. All stories 
printed in this magazine are fic- 
tion and any similarity between 
characters and actual persons is 
coincidental. Title registered U.S. 
Patent Office. Printed in U.S. A. 





To Live Again 
Robert Silverberg 

Masque World 
Alexei Panshin 

The Palace of Eternity 
Bob Shaw 

The Left Hand of Darkness 
Ursula K. LeGuin 




TO LIVE AGAIN, by Robert 
Silverberg (Doubleday, $4.95), is a 
novel about power and about the 
urge to power which probably is 
based on the common human crav- 
ing for immortality. The people 
in this book, set in an indefinite 
but apparently twenty-first-centu- 
ry United States, have both finan- 



cial resources based on superb 
business ability and a process for 
recording and transplanting per- 
sonalities. 

The Scheffing process which 
ensures a form of survival after 
death and multiple personalities 
within the living — is a frankly com- 
mercial one. If you have enough 
money you can afford to have your 
memories recorded periodically. At 
the same time you can purchase the 
recorded memories of others. 

These memories are fed into 
your brain, where they evidence 
themselves as supernumerary per- 
sona, exhibiting something very 
much like their donor’s personality 
and offering all his remembered ex- 
periences. Thus a demi-virgin can 
acquire the manner of a mature 
young woman overnight — provided 
both of them command enough 
wealth to enjoy the services of the 
(Please turn to page 142) 



2 



GALAXY 





WHAT SECRET POWER 
DID THEY POSSESS? 



These 2reat minds were Kosicrudans 



Francis Bacon 



THIS BOOK FR 



Why were these men great? 

How does anyone — man or woman — achieve 
greatness? Is it not by mastery of the powers 
within ourselves? 

Know the mysterious world within you ! Attune 
yourself to the wisdom of the ages! Grasp the 
inner power of your mind ! Learn the secrets of a 
full and peaceful life ! 

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and inventor. . . 
Isaac Newton, discoverer of the Law of Gravita- 
tion . . . Francis Bacon, philosopher and scientist 
. . . like many other learned and great men and 
women . . . were Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians 
(NOT a religious organization) have been in 
existence for centuries. Today, headquarters of 
the Rosicrucians send over seven million pieces 
of mail annually to all parts of the world. 



Scribe E.R.A. SEND THIS COUPON 

The ROSICRUCIANS please include 

(AMORC) YOUR ZIP CODE 

San Jose, California 95114, U.S.A. 

Please send me the /ree book. The Mastery of Life, 
which explains how I may learn to use my faculties 
and powers of mind. 



S® ROSICRUCIANS 

San Jose (AMORC) California 95114, U.S.A. 



XK’rite for your FREE 
copy of ''The Mas» 
tery of Life” — 
TODAY. No ob- 
Ugationii A non* 
prohc organiza* 
iron.:: Address : 
Scribe E.R>. 



THE 

SHAKER 

REVIVAL 

In this final decade of the 
twentieth century sainthood 
is only for the very young! 

GERALD JONAS 



TO: Arthur Stock, Executive Ed- 
itor, Ideas Illustrated, New 
York City, 14632008447 
FROM; Raymond Senter, c/o 
Hudson Junction Rotel, 
Hudson Junction, N.Y. 
28997601910 

ENCLOSED: Tentative Lead for 
“The Shaker Re- 
vival.” Fix, tapes 
upcoming. 

JERUSALEM WEST, N.Y., 
Thursday, June 28, 1995 — The 
work of Salvation goes forward in 
this green and pleasant Hudson 
Valley hamlet to the high-pitched 
accompaniment of turbo-car ex- 
hausts and the amplified beat of 
the “world’s loudest jag-rock 
band.” Where worm-eaten apples 
fell untended in abandoned or- 
chards less than a decade ago a 
new religious sect has burst into 
full bloom. In their fantastic four- 
year history the so-called New 
Shakers — or United Society of 
Believers (Revived), to give them 
their official title — have provoked 
the hottest controversy in Chris- 
tendom since Martin Luther 
nailed his ninety-five thesis to the 
door of All Saints Church in Wit- 
tenberg, Germany, on October 
Thirty-one, Fifteen-seventeen. 
Boasting a membership of more 
than a hundred thousand today, 
the New Shakers have been proc- 
essing applications at the rate of 
nine hundred a week. Although a 
handful of these “recruits” are in 



5 




their early and middle twenties — 
and last month a New Jersey man 
was accepted into the Shaker 
Family at Wildwood at the ripe 
old age of thirty-two — the average 
New Shaker has not yet reached 
his eighteenth birthday. 

Richard F, one of the members 
of the “First Octave” who have 
been honored with “uncontami- 
nated” Shaker surnames, ex- 
plains it this way: “We've got 
nothing against feebies. They 
have a piece of the Gift inside just 
like anyone else. But it’s hard for 
them to travel with the Family. 
Jag-rock hurts their ears, and 
they can’t sync with the Four 
Noes, no matter how hard they 
try. So we say to them, ‘Forget it, 
star. Your wheels are not our 
wheels. But we’re all going some- 
where, right? See you at the other 
end.’ ” 

It is hardly surprising that so 
many “feebies” — people over 

thirty — have trouble with the bas- 
ic Believers’ Creed: “No hate. No 
war. No money. No sex.” Evi- 
dently, in this final decade of the 
twentieth century, sainthood is 
only possible for the very young. 

The “Roundhouse” at Jerusa- 
lem West is, in one sense, the Vat- 
ican of the nationwide movement. 
But in many ways it is typical of 
the New Shaker communities 
springing up from La Jolla, Cali- 
fornia, to Seal Harbor, Maine. At 
last count there were sixty-one 
separate “tribes,” some contain- 



ing as many as fifteen “families” 
of a hundred and twenty-eight 
members each. Each Shaker 
family is housed in an army-sur- 
plus pliodesic dome — covering 
some ten thousand square feet of 
bare but vinyl-hardened earth — 
which serves as bedroom, living 
room, workshop and holy taber- 
nacle, all in one. There is a much 
smaller satellite dome forty feet 
from the main building which 
might be called the Outhouse, but 
isn’t — the New Shakers them- 
selves refer to it as Sin City. In 
keeping with their general atti- 
tude toward the bodily functions. 
Sin City is the only place in the 
Jerusalem West compound that is 
off-limits to visitors. 

As difficult as it may be for 
most North Americans to accept, 
today’s typical Shaker recruit 
comes from a background of un- 
questioned abundance and re- 
spectability. There is no taint of 
the Ghetto and no evidence of 
serious behavioral problems. In 
fact. Preliminary School records 
show that these young people Of- 
ten excelled in polymorphous play 
and responded quite normally to 
the usual spectrum of chemical 
and electrical euphorics. As un- 
derteens, their proficiency in pro- 
gramed dating was consistently 
rated “superior” and they were 
often cited as leaders in organiz- 
ing multiple-outlet experiences. 
Later, in Modular School, they 
scored in the fiftieth percentile or 



6 



GALAXY 




better on Brand-Differentiation 
tests. In short, according to all the 
available figures, they would have 
had no trouble gaining admission 
to the college of their choice or 
obtaining a commission in the 
Consumer Corps or qualifying for 
a Federal Travel Grant. Yet for 
some reason, on the very brink of 
maturity, they turned their backs 
on all the benefits their parents 
and grandparents fought so hard 
for in the Cultural Revolution — 
and plunged instead into a life of 
regimented sense-denial. 

On a typical summer’s after- 
noon at Jerusalem West, with the 
sun filtering through the translu- 
cent dome and bathing the entire 
area in a soft golden glow, the 
Roundhouse resembles nothing so 
much as a giant, queenless bee- 
hive. In the gleaming chrome- 
and-copper kitchen blenders 
whirr and huge pots bubble as a 
squad of white-smocked Food 
Deacons prepares the copious 
vegetable stew that forms the sta- 
ple of the Shaker diet. In the 
sound-proofed garage sector the 
Shop Deacons are busily trans- 
forming another hopeless-looking 
junkheap into the economical, 
turbine-powered “hotrod” — one al- 
ready known to connoisseurs in 
this country and abroad as the 
Shakerbike — and the eight Ad- 
ministrative Deacons and their 
assistants are directing family 
business from a small fiber- 
walled cubicle known simply as 



The Office. And the sixteen-piece 
band is cutting a new liturgical 
tape for the Evening Service — a 
tape that may possibly end up as 
number one on the federal pop 
charts like the recent Shaker hit. 
This Freeway's Plenty Wide 
Enough. No matter where one 
turns beneath the big dome one 
finds young people humming, 
tapping their feet, breaking into 
snatches of song and generally liv- 
ing up to the New Shaker motto: 
“Work is Play.” One of their 
most popular songs — a character- 
istic coupling of Old Shaker 
words to a modern jag-rock 
background — concludes with this 
no-nonsense summation of the 
Shaker life-style: 

It’s the Gift to be simple. 

The Gift to be free, 

The Gift to come down 
Where the Gift ought to be. 

MORE TO COME 

XEROGRAM: June 28 (11:15 
P.M.) 

TO: The Dean, Skinner Free In- 
stitute, Ronkonoma, New 
Jersey 72441333965 
FROM: Raymond Senter, c/o 
Hudson Junction Rotel, 
Hudson Junction, N.Y. 
28997601910 

Friend: 

My son Bruce Senter, age 
14, was enrolled in your in- 



THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



7 




stitute for a six-week semi- 
nar in Applied Physiology 
beginning May 10. Accord- 
ing to the transcript re- 
ceived by his Modular 
School (NYCl 18A), he suc- 
cessfully completed his 
course of studies on June 
21. Mrs. Senter and I have 
had no word from him 
since. He had earlier talked 
with his Advisor about pur- 
suing a Field-research pro- 
ject in Intensive Orgasm. I 
would appreciate any further 
information you can give 
me as to his post-seminar 
whereabouts. Thank you. 

TO: Stock, Ex-Ed, LI. 

FROM: Senter 

ENCLOSED: Background tape. 

Interview with Har- 
ry G (born “Guar- 
dino”), member of 
First Octave. Ed- 
ited Transcript, 
June 29. 

Q: Suppose we begin by talking 
a little about your position 
here as one of the — well, what 
shall I say? Founding Fathers 
of the Shaker Revival? 

A: First you better take a deep 
breath, star. That’s all out of 
sync. There’s no Founding 
Fathers here. Or Founding 
Mothers or any of that jag. 
There’s only one Father and 
one Mother and they’re every- 



where and nowhere, understand? 

Q: What I meant was — as a 
member of the First Octave 
you have certain duties and 
responsibilities — 

A: Like I said, star, everyone’s 
equal here. 

Q: I was under the impression 
that your rules stress obedience 
to a hierarchy? 

A: Oh, there has to be order, 
sure, but it’s nothing personal. 
If you can punch a computer 
— you sync with The Office 
Deacons. If you make it with 
wheels you’re in the Shop 
crew. Me — I fold my bed in 
the morning, push a juice-horn 
in the band and talk to report- 
ers when they ask for me. 
That doesn’t mak.e me Pope. 

Q: What about the honorary 
nomenclature? 

A: What’s that? 

Q: The initials. Instead of last 
names. 

A: Oh, yeah. They were given to 
us as a sign. You want to know 
what of? 

Q: Please. 

A: As a sign that no one’s stuck 
with his birth kit. Sure, you 
may start with a Chevvie Six 
chassis and I have to go with a 
Toyota. That’s the luck of the 
DNA. But we all need a spark 
in the chamber to get it mov- 
ing. That’s the Gift. And if I 
burn clean and keep in tune I 
may leave you flat in my 
tracks. Right? 



8 




Q: What about the Ghetto? 

A: Even the Blacks have a piece 
of the Gift. What they do with 
it is their trip. 

Q: There’s been a lot of contro- 
versy lately about whether 
your movement is really Chris- 
tian — in a religious sense. 
Would you care to comment 
on that? 

A: You mean like “Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God?” Sure, we be- 
lieve that. And we believe in 
Harry G, the Son of God and 
Richard F the Son of God and 
— what’s your name, star? — 
Raymond Senter, the Son of 
God. That’s the gift. That’s 
what it’s all about. Jesus found 
the Gift inside. So did Buddha, 
Mother Ann, even Malcolm X 
— we don’t worry too much 
about who said what first. First 
you find the Gift — then you live 
it. The Freeway’s plenty wide 
enough. 

Q: Then why all the emphasis on 
your Believers’ Creed, and the 
Articles of Faith, and your 
clothes? 

A; Took, star, every machine’s 
got a set of specs. You travel 
with us, you learn our set. We 
keep the chrome shiny, the 
chambers clean. And we don’t 
like accidents. 

Q: Your prohibitions against 
money and sex — 

A: “Prohibitions” is a feebie 
word. We’re free from money 
and sex. The Four Noes are 

THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



like a Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. See, everybody’s really 
born free — but you have to 
know it. So we don’t rob cra- 
dles. We say, let them grow up, 
learn what it’s all about — the 
pill, the puffer, the feel-o-mat — 
all the perms and combos. 
Then, when they’re fifteen or 
sixteen, if they still crave those 
chains, okay. If not, they know 
where to find us. 

Q: What about the people who 
sign up and then change their 
minds? 

A; We have no chains — if that’s 
what you mean. 

Q:You don’t do anything to try 
to keep them? 

A: Once you’ve really found the 
Gift inside there’s no such 
thing as “changing your 
mind.” 

Q: What’s your attitude toward 
the Old Shakers? They died 




9 



out, didn’t they, for lack of 
recruits? 

A; Everything is born and dies 
and gets reborn again. 

Q: Harry, what would happen if 
this time the whole world be- 
came Shakers? 

A: Don’t worry, star. You won’t 
be around to see it. 

MORE TO COME 

XEROGRAM; June 29 (10:43 

P.M.) 

TO: Connie Fine, Director, 
Camp Encounter, Went- 
worth, Maine, 47119650023 

FROM: Raymond Senter, Hud- 
son Junction Rotel, 
Hudson Junction, N.Y., 
28997601910 

Connie: 

Has Bruce arrived yet? 
Arlene and 1 have lost con- 
tact with him in the last 
week, and it occurred to me 
that he may have hiked up 
to camp early and simply 
forgotten to buzz us — he 
was so charged up about be- 
ing -a full counselor-leader 
of his own T-group this sea- 
son. Anyway, would you 
please buzz me soonest at 
the above zip? You know 
how mothers tend to over- 
load the worry-circuits until 
they know for sure that 
their little wriggler is safely 
plugged in somewhere. Joy 
to you and yours, Ray. 



TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., /./. 

FROM; Senter 

ENCLOSED: Fact sheet on Old 
Shakers 

* Foundress — Mother Ann Lee, 
b. Feb. 29, 1736, Manchester, 
England. 

* Antecedents — Early Puritan 

“seekers” (Quakers), French 
“Prophets” (Camisards). 

*Origin — Following an unhap- 
py marriage — four children, 
all dead in infancy — Mother 
Ann begins to preach that 
“concupiscence” is the root of 
all evil. Persecutions and im- 
prisonment. 

*1774 — Mother Ann and seven 
early disciples sail to Ameri- 
ca aboard the ship Mariah. 
Group settles near Albany. 
Public preaching against con- 
cupiscence. More persecu- 
tions. More converts. Ecstatic, 
convulsive worship. Mother 
Ann’s “miracles.” 

*1784 — Mother Ann dies. 

*1787 — Mother Ann’s succes- 
sors, Father Joseph and Moth- 
er Lucy, organize followers in- 
to monastic communities and 
“separate” themselves from 
sinful world. 

*1787-1794 — Expansion of sect 
through New York State and 
New England. 

*1806-1826 — Exparision of sect 
across Western frontier — 
Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana. 

*1837-1845 — Mass outbreak of 



10 



GALAXY 




spiritualism. Blessings, songs, 
spirit-drawings and business 
advice transmitted by deceased 
leaders through living “in- 
struments.” 

*1850's — Highpoint of Society. 
Six thousand members, 18 
communities, fifty-eight “Fam- 
ilies.” 

*Total recorded membership — 
from late 18th century to late 
20th century — approximately 
seventeen thousand. 

*01d Shakers noted for — mail- 
order seed business, handi- 
crafts (brooms, baskets and 
boxes), furniture-manufacture. 

*Credited with invention of — 
common clothes pin, cut nails, 
circular saw, turbine water- 
wheel, steam-driven washing 
machine. 

* Worship — Emphasis on com- 
munal singing and dancing. 
Early “convulsive” phase gives 
way in nineteenth century to 
highly organized performances 
and processions — ring dances, 
square order shuffles. 

*BelieJs — Celibacy, Duality of 
Deity (Eather and Mother 
God), Equality of the Sexes, 
Equality in Labor, Equality in 
Property. Society to be per- 
petuated by “admission of 
serious-minded persons and 
adoption of children.” 

*Motto — “Hands to work and 
Hearts to God.” 

MORE TO COME 



XEROGRAM; June 30 (8:15 

A.M.) 

TO: Mrs. Rosemary Collins, 133 
Escorial Drive, Baj'water, 
Florida, 92635776901 
FROM: Raymond Senter, Hud- 
son Junction Rotel, 
Hudson Junction, N.Y. 
28997601910 

Dear Rosie: 

Has that little wriggler of 
ours been down your way 
lately? Bruce is off again on 
an unannounced sidetrip, 
and it struck me that he 
might have hopped down 
south to visit his favorite 
aunt. Not to mention his 
favorite cousin! How is that 
suntanned teaser of yours? 
Still taking after you in the 
S-L-N department? Give 
her a big kiss for me — you 
know where! And if Bruce 
does show up please buzz 
me right away at the above 
zip. Much Brotherly Love, 
Ray. 

TO; Stock, Ex-Ed., LI. 

FROM; Senter 

ENCLOSED: Caption tape for 
film segment on 
Worship Service. 

JERUSALEM WEST, Saturday, 
June 30 — I’m standing at the en- 
trance to the inner sanctum of 
the huge Roundhouse here, the 
so-called Meeting Center, which 



THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



11 




is used only for important cere- 
monial functions — like the Satur- 
day Night Dance scheduled to be- 
gin in exactly five minutes. In 
the Holy Corridor to my right 
the entire congregation has al- 
ready assembled in two rows, one 
for boys and one for girls, side by 
side but not touching. During the 
week the Meeting Center is sepa- 
rated from the work and living 
areas by curved translucent parti- 
tions which fit together to make a 
little dome-within-a-dome. But 
when the sun begins to set on 
Saturday night the partitions are 
removed to reveal a circular 
dance floor, which is in fact the 
hub of the building. From this 
slightly raised platform of gleam- 
ing fibercast, I can look down 
each radial corridor — past the 
rows of neatly folded beds in the 
dormitories, past the shrouded 
machines in the repair shops, past 
the partly finished shakerbikes in 
the garage, past the scrubbed for- 
mica tables in the kitchen — to the 
dim horizon line where the dome 
comes to rest on the sacred soil of 
Jerusalem West. 

All artificial lights have been 
extinguished for the Sabbath cele- 
bration. The only illumination 
comes from the last rays of the 
sun, a dying torch that seems to 
have set the dome material itself 
ablaze. It’s a little like standing 
inside the fiery furnace of Neb- 
uchadnezzar with a hundred and 
twenty-eight unworried prophets 



of the Lord. The silence is virtual- 
ly complete — not a cough, not the 
faintest rustle of fabric is heard. 
Even the air vents have been 
turned off — at least for the mo- 
ment. I become aware of the 
harsh sound of my own respira- 
tion. 

At precisely eight o’clock the 
two lines of worshippers begin to 
move forward out of the Holy 
Corridor. They circle the dance 
floor, the boys moving to the 
right, the girls to the left. Actual- 
ly, it’s difficult to tell them apart. 
The Shakers use no body orna- 
ments at all — no paints, no wigs, 
no gems, no bugs, no dildoes, no 
flashers. All wear their hair 
cropped short, as if sheared with 
the aid of an overturned bowl. And 
all are dressed in some variation 
of Shaker gear — a loosely fitting, 
long-sleeved, buttonless and col- 
larless shirt slit open at the neck 
for two inches and hanging free at 
the waist over a pair of baggy 
trousers pulled tight around each 
ankle by a hidden elastic band. 

The garments look vaguely 
North African. They are made of 
soft dynaleen and they come in a 
variety of pastel shades. One girl 
may be wearing a pale pink top 
and a light blue bottom. The boy 
standing opposite her may have 
on the same colors, reversed. 
Others in the procession have 
chosen combinations of lilac and 
peach, ivory and lemon or tur- 
quoise and butternut. The range 



12 



GALAXY 




of hues seems endless but the in- 
tensity never varies, so that the 
entire spectacle presents a living 
demonstration of one of the basic 
Articles of Faith of the Shaker 
Revival — Diversity in Uniformity. 

Now the procession has ended. 
The worshipers have formed two 
matching arcs, sixty-four boys on 
one side, sixty-four girls on the 
other, each standing precisely an 
arm’s length from each neighbor. 
All are barefoot. All are wearing 
the same expression — a smile so 
modest as to be virtually unde- 
tectable if it were not mirrored 
and remirrored a hundred and 
twenty-eight times around the 
circumference of the ritual circle. 
The color of the dome has begun 
to change to a darker, angrier 
crimson. Whether the natural twi- 
light’s being artifically augmented 
— either from inside or outside 
the building — is impossible to 
tell. All eyes are turned upward to 
a focus about twenty-five feet 
above the center of the floor, 
where an eight-sided loudspeaker 
hangs by a chrome-plated cable 
from the midpoint of the dome. 
The air begins to fill with a perva- 
sive vibration like the rumble of a 
distant monocar racing toward 
you in the night. And then the 
music explodes into the super- 
charged air. Instantly the floor is 
alive with jerking, writhing bodies 
— it’s as if each chord were an 
electrical impulse applied directly 
to the nerve ends of the dancers 



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IF IT'S January, Spring can't be far 
away. And a Happy New Year to 
everyone. This month is actually the 
end of the Fall season for publishers. 
[Officially, Spring starts for us in 
February and ends in July.] The end 
of our presenf season sees a romp by 
Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de 
Camp on our list— LAND OF UN- 
REASON— a perfectly delightful ad- 
venture of what happens to a young 
man who is hauled off by a bunch of 
drunken elves. There is Lin Carter's 
usual perspicacious introduction. 

• 

AND JANUARY is also lit by T.L. 
Sherred's ALIEN ISLAND, in which 
the secret services get rapped while 
Regan merchants do the equivalent 
of buying Manhattan. Well, roughly! 
And a new one for us— Douglas R. 
Mason, in a chilling forecast of a 
Mof her-Computer-Complex titied 
MATRIX. The awful thing is it could 
happen . . . 

• 

WE ARE ALSO celebrating January 
with a reissue of Ted Sturgeon's best, 
E PLURIBUS UNICORN, MORE 
THAN HUMAN and CAVIAR, and by 
bringing the earlier Gorean volumes 
series by John Norman to the fans 
who missed them— namely, TARNS- 
MAN OF GOR, OUTLAW OF GOR, 
PRIEST-KINGSOFGOR. 



THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



13 





Trends for 1970— prices are going 
up, even ours. But weTI try to hold the 
75c price for reissues. Given our own 
personal preference, we'd rather pay 
20c extra for a good-sized typeface 
than winkle our way through tiny 
type. But then, we read all day long, 
of necessity [and usually half the 
night, too.) Nevertheless 95c is still 
one helluva bargain for a couple of 
hours of interesting entertainment. 

• 

AND in 1970— more fantasy. Ever 
since we were requested to "Find a 
second classic trilogy," and did 
(Peake's GORMENGHAST] in the 
Fall of 1968, we, assisted by Jim 
Blish's enthusiasm for Cabell and Lin 
Carter's for fantasy in general, have 
been quietly nudging to do more than 
just one a month. 

• 

CONSERVATIONIST Note: This 

month we publish ALMOST ANCES- 
TORS— a $3.95 book about a tribe 
now extinct— with a view to avoid- 
ing having the same thing happen to 
the human species. Awareness of the 
threat to survival is for everybody, 
not just readers of science fiction. So 
keep talking, keep reading, and we'll 
keep publishing books like THE 
FRAIL OCEAN, MOMENT IN THE 
SUN, THE POPULATION BOMB, 
etcetera. Meanwhile, does everyone 
have his EFFETE SNOB button? 

BB 



— and the music is unbelievably 
loud. 

The dome must act as an enor- 
mous soundbox. I can feel the vi- 
brations in my feet and my teeth 
are chattering with the beat — but 
as wild as the dancing is, the cir- 
cle is still intact. Each Shaker is 
“shaking” in his own place. Some 
are uttering incomprehensible 
cries, the holy gibberish that the 
Shakers call their Gift of Tongues 
— ecstatic prophesies symbolizing 
the Wordless Word of the Deity. 
One young girl with a gaunt but 
beautiful face is howling like a 
coyote. Another is grunting like a 
pig. A third is alternately spitting 
into the air and slapping her own 
cheeks viciously with both hands. 

Across the floor a tall skinny 
boy has shaken loose from the rim 
of the circle. Pirouetting at high 
speed, his head thrown straight 
back so that his eyes are fixed on 
the crimson membrane of the 
dome, he seems to be propelling 
himself in an erratic path toward 
the center of the floor. .And now 
the dome is changing color again, 
clotting to a deeper purple — like 
the color of a late evening sky but 
flecked with scarlet stars that 
seem to be darting about with a 
life of their own, colliding, coalesc- 
ing, reforming. 

A moment of relative calm has 
descended on the dancers. They 
are standing with their hands at 
their sides — only their heads are 
moving, lolling first to one side, 



14 



GALAXY 




then the other, in keeping with the 
new, subdued rhythm of the mu- 
sic. The tall boy in the center has 
begun to spin around and around 
in place, picking up speed with 
each rotation — now he’s whirling 
like a top, his head still bent 
back, his eyes staring sightlessly. 
His right arm shoots out from the 
shoulder, the elbow locked, the 
fingers stiff, the palm flat — this is 
what the Shakers call the Arrow 
Sign, a manifestation of the Gift 
of Prophecy, directly inspired by 
the Dual Deity, Father Power and 
Mother Wisdom. The tall boy is 
the “instrument” and he is about 
to receive a message from on high. 

His head tilts forward. His ro- 
tation slows. He cOmes to a halt 
with his right arm pointing at a 
short red-haired girl. The girl be- 
gins to shake all over as if struck 
by a high fever. The music rises 
to an ear-shattering crescendo and 
ends in mid-note. 

“Everyone’s a mirror,” the tall 
boy shouts. “Clean, clean, clean 
— oh, let it shine! My dirt’s not 
my own but it stains the earth. 
And the earth’s not my own — the 
Mother and Father are light 
above light but the light can’t 
shine alone. Only a mirror can 
shine, shine, shine. Let the mirror 
be mine, be mine, be mine!” 

The red-haired girl is shaking 
so hard her limbs are flailing like 
whips. Her mouth has fallen open 
and she begins to moan, barely 
audibly at first. What she utters 




might be a single-syllable word 
like “clean” or “mine” or “shine” 
repeatedly, so rapidly that the 
consonants break down and the 
vowels flow into one unending 
stream of sound. But it keeps 
getting louder and louder and still 
louder, like the wail of an air-raid 
siren, until all resemblance to 
speech disappears and it seems 
impossible that such a sound can 
come from a human throat. You 
can almost hear the blood vessels 
straining, bursting. 

Then the loudspeaker cuts in 
again in mid-note with the loudest, 
wildest jag-rock riff I have ever 
heard, only it’s no longer some- 
thing you can hear — it’s inside 
you or you’re inside it. And the 



THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



15 




dome has burst into blooms of col- 
or! A stroboscopic fireworks dis- 
play that obliterates all outlines 
and shatters perspective and you 
can’t tell whether the dancers are 
moving very, very slowly or very, 
very fast. The movement is so per- 
fectly synchronized with the 
sound and the sound with the col- 
or that there seems to be no fixed 
reference point anywhere. 

All you can say is: “There is 
color, there is sound, there is 
movement — ” 

This is the Gift of Seizure, 
which the New Shakers prize so 
highly — and whether it is genu- 
inely mystical, as they claim, or 
autohypnotic or drug-induced, as 
some critics maintain, or a com- 
bination of all of these or some- 
thing else entirely, it is an undeni- 
ably real — and profoundly dis- 
turbing — experience. 

XEROGRAM: July 1 (7:27 A.M.) 
TO: Frederick Rickover, Eastern 
Supervisor, Feel-O-Mat 
Corp., Baltimore, Maryland, 
6503477502 

FROM: Raymond Senter, Hud- 
son Junction Rotel, Hud- 
son Junction, N.Y. 
28997601910 

(WARNING: PERSONALIZED 
ENVELOPE: CONTENTS 

WILL POWDER IE OPENED 
IMPROPERL Y) 

Fred: 

I’m afraid it’s back-scratch- 



ing time again. I need a code- 
check on DNA No. 151621 
HR/tl/4-9-065. I’m inter- 
ested in whether the codee 
has plugged into a feel-o-mat 
anywhere in the Federation 
during the past two weeks. 
This one’s a family matter, 
not business, so buzz me only 
at the above zip. I won’t for- 
get it. Gratefully, Ray. 

TO: Stock. Ex-Ed., LI. 

FROM: Senter 

ENCFOSED: Three tapes. New 
Shaker “testimon- 
ies.” Edited tran- 
scripts, July 1. 

TAPE I (Shaker name, “Farm- 
er Brown”): What kind of mike is 
this? No kidding. I didn’t know 
they made a re-amper this small. 
Chinese? Oh. Right. Well, let’s 
see — 1 was born April seven- 
teenth, nineteen-seventy-four, in 
Ellsworth, Saskatchewan. My 
breath-father’s a foremen at a big 
refinery there. My breath-mother 
was a consumer-housewife. She’s 
gone over now. It’s kind of hard 
to remember details. When I was 
real little, I think I saw the feds 
scratch a Bomb-thrower on the 
steps of City Hall. But maybe 
that was only something I saw on 
2-D. School was — you know, the 
usual. Oh, once a bunch of us 
kids got hold of some fresh spores 
from the refinery — 1 guess we 
stole them somehow. Anyway, 



16 



GALAXY 




there was still a lot of open land 
around and we planted them and 
raised our own crop of puffers. I 
didn’t come down for a week. 
That was my farming experience. 
(LAUGHTER) I applied for a 
bummer-grant on my fifteenth 
birthday, got a two-year contract 
and took off the next day for the 
sun. Let’s see — Minneapolis, Kan- 
sas City, Mexico — what a jolt! 
There weren’t so many feel-o-mats 
in the small towns down there and 
1 was into all the hard stuff you 
could get in those days — speed, 
yellow, rock-juice, little-annie — 1 
guess the only thing I never tried 
for a jolt was the Process and 
there were times when I was just 
about ready. 

When the grant ran out, I just 
kept bumming on my own. At 
first you think it’s going to be real 
easy. Half the people you know 
are still on contract and they share 
it around. Then your old friends 
start running out faster than you 
make new ones and there’s a 
whole new generation on the road. 
And you start feeling more and 
more like a feebie and acting like 
one. I was lucky because 1 met 
this sweet little dove in Nashville 
— she had a master’s in Audio- 
Visual biit she was psycho for 
bummers, especially flat ones. 

Anyway, she comes back to her 
coop one day with a new tape and 
puts it on and says, “This’ll go 
right through you. It’s a wild new 
group called the Shakers.” 

THE ShAKER REVIVAL 



She didn’t know two bobby’s 
worth about the Shakers and I 
didn’t either — the first Shaker 
tapes were just hitting the market 
about then. Well, I can tell you, 
that jagged sound gave me a jolt. 
I mean, it was bigger than yellow, 
bigger than juice, only it let you 
down on your feet instead of your 
back. 1 had this feeling 1 had to 
hear more. I got all the tapes that 
were out but they weren’t enough. 
So I took off one night for Wild- 
wood and before I knew it I was 
in a Prep Meeting and I was home 
free — you know. I’ve always kind 
of hoped that little dove makes it 
on her own — Oh, yeah, the band. 

Well, I’m one of the Band Dea- 
cons, which is what’s called a Sac- 
rificial Gift because it means han- 
dling the accounts — and that’s too 
close to the jacks and bobbys for 
comfort. But someone has to do it. 
You can’t stay alive in an impure 
world without getting a little 
stained and if outsiders want to 
lay the Kennedys on us for bikes 
and tapes, that’s a necessary evil. 
But we don’t like to spread the 
risk in the Family. So the Deacons 
sign the checks and deal with the 
agents and the stain’s on us alone. 
And everyone prays a little harder 
to square it with the Father and 
Mother. 

TAPE II (Shaker name, “Ma- 
riah Moses”): I was born in Dar- 
ien, Connecticut. I’m an Aquarius 
with Leo rising. Do you want my 

17 




breath-name? I don’t mind — it’s 
Cathy Ginsberg. My breath-par- 
ents are both full-time consumers. 
I didn’t have a very interesting 
childhood, I guess: I went to Mid- 
Darien Modular School. I was a 
pretty good student — my best sub- 
ject was World Culture. 1 consum- 
mated on my third date, which 
was about average. I’ve been told, 
for my class. Do you really want 
all this background stuff? I guess 
the biggest thing that happened to 
the old me was when I won a sec- 
ond prize in the Maxwell Puffer 
Civic Essay contest when I was 
fourteen. The subject was The 
Joys oj Spectalorism and the 
prize was a Programed Weekend 
in Hawaii for two. I don’t remem- 
ber who I went with. But Hawaii 
was really nice. All those brown- 
skinned boys — we went to a big 
luau on Saturday night. That’s a 
native-style orgy. They taught me 
things we never even learned in 
school. 

I remember thinking. Oh, star, 
this is the living end! 

But when it was all over I had 
another thought. If this was the 
living end — what came next? 1 
don’t know if it was the roast pig 
or what but I didn’t feel so good 
for a few days. The night we got 
back home — Herbie! That was 
the name of my date, Herbie Al- 
cott — he had short curly hair all 
over his back — anyway, the night 
I got home my breath-parents 
picked me up at the airport and 



on the way back to Darien they 
started asking me what I wanted 
to do with my life. They were try- 
ing to be so helpful, you know. I 
mean, you could see they would 
have been disappointed if I got in- 
volved in production of some kind 
but they weren’t about to say that 
in so many words. They just asked 
me if I had decided how I wanted 
to plug into the Big Board. It was 
up to me to choose between col- 
lege or the Consumer Corps or a 
Travel Grant — they even asked 
me if Herbie and I were getting 
serious and if we wanted to have 
a baby — because the waiting-list 
at the Marriage Bureau was al- 
ready six-months long and getting 
longer. The trouble was 1 was 
still thinking about the luau and 
the roast pig and I felt all — 
burned out. Like a piece of char- 
coal that still looks solid but is 
really just white ash — and if you 
touch it it crumbles and blows 
away. So I said I’d think about it 
but what I was really thinking 
was I’m not signing up for any 
more orgies just yet. 

And a few days later the miracle 
happened. A girl in our class was 
reported missing and a friend of 
mine heard someone say that she’d 
become a Shaker. 

I said, “What’s that?” 

My friend said, “It’s a religion 
that believes in No hate. No war. 
No money. No sex.” 

And I felt this thrill go right 
through me. And even though I 



18 



GALAXY 




didn’t know what it meant at the 
time, that was the moment I dis- 
covered my Gift. It was such a 
warm feeling, like something soft 
and quiet curled up inside you, 
waiting. And the day I turned fif- 
teen I hiked up to Jerusalem and 
I never went home. That was elev- 
en months ago . . . oh, you can’t 
describe what happens at Pre- 
parative Meeting. It’s what hap- 
pens inside you that counts. Like 
now, when I think of all my old 
friends from Darien, I say a little 
prayer. 

Father Power, Mother Wisdom, 
touch their Gifts, set them free . . . 

TAPE III (Shaker name, “Ear- 
nest Truth’’): I’m aware that I’m 
something of a rarity here. I as- 
sume that’s why you asked me for 
a testimony. But I don’t want you 
categorizing me as a Shaker intel- 
lectual or a Shaker theologian or 
anything like that. I serve as Legal 
Deacon because that’s my Gift. 
But I’m also a member of the vac- 
uum detail in Corridor Three and 
that’s my Gift too. I’d be just as 
good a Shaker if I only cleaned 
the floor and nothing else. Is that 
clear? Good. Well then, as briefly 
as possible: (READS FROM 

PREPARED TEXT) I’m twenty- 
four years old, from Berkeley, Cal- 
ifornia. Breath-parents were on the 
faculty at the University; killed in 
an air crash when I was ten. 1 was 
raised by the state. Pacific High- 
lands Modular School: First hon- 



ors. Consumer Corps: Media-aide 
First-class. Entered the University 
at seventeen. Pre-law. Graduated 
magna cum in nineteen-ninety. 
Completed four-year Law School 
in three years. In my final year I 
became interested in the literature 
of religion — or, to be more pre- 
cise, the literature of mysticism — 
possibly as a counterpoise to the 
increasing intensity of my formal 
studies. Purely as an intellectual 
diversion 1 began to read St. John 
of the Cross, George Fox, the 
Vedas, Tao, Zen, the Kabbala, the 
Sufis. But when I came across the 
early Shakers I was struck at once 
with the daring and clarity of this 
purely American variant. All mys- 
tics seek spiritual union with the 
Void, the Nameless, the Formless, 
the Ineffable. But the little band 
of Shaker pilgrims, confronted 
with a vast and apparently un- 
bounded wilderness, took a mar- 
velous quantum leap of faith and 
decided that the union had al- 
ready been accomplished. The 
wilderness was the Void. For those 
who had eyes to see — this was 
God’s Kingdom. And by practic- 
ing a total communism, a total 
abnegation, a total dedication, 
they made the wilderness flower 
for two hundred years. Then, un- 
able to adjust to the methodolo- 
gies of the Industrial Revolution, 
they quietly faded away; it was as 
if their gentle spirit had found a 
final resting place in the design of 
their utterly simple and utterly 



THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



19 




beautiful wooden furniture — each 
piece of which has since become a 
collector’s item. When I began 
reading about the Old Shakers I 
had of course heard about the 
New Shakers — but I assumed 
that they were just another crack- 
pot fundamentalist sect like the 
Holy Rollers or the Snake Han- 
dlers, an attempt to keep alive the 
pieties of a simpler day in the pre- 
sent age of abundance. But even- 
tually my curiosity — or so 1 called 
it at the time — led me to investi- 
gate a Preparative Meeting that 
had been established in the Big 
Sur near Jefferstown. And I found 
my Gift. The experience varies 
from individual to individual. For 
me it was the revelation that the 
complex machine we refer to as 
the Abundant Society is the real 
anachronism. All the euphorics 
we feed ourselves cannot change 
the fact that the machinery of 
abundance has long since reached 
its limit as a vital force and is now 
choking on its own waste products 
— Pollution, Overpopulation, De- 
humanization. Far from being a 
breakthrough, the so-called Cul- 
tural Revolution was merely the 
last gasp of the old order trying to 
maintain itself by programing 
man’s most private senses into 
the machine. And the childish 
Bomb-throwers were nothing but 
retarded romantics, an anachro- 
nism within an anachronism. At 
this juncture in history, only the 
Shaker Revival offers a true alter- 



native — in the utterly simple, and 
therefore utterly profound. Four 
Noes. The secular world usually 
praises us for our rejection of Hate 
and War and mocks us for our re- 
jection of Money and Sex. But the 
Four Noes constitute a beautifully 
balanced ethical equation, in 
which each term is a function of 
the other three. There are no easy 
Utopias. Non-Shakers often ask: 
What would happen if everyone 
became a Shaker? Wouldn’t that 
be the end of the human race? My 
personal answer is this; Society is 
suffering from the sickness unto 
death — a plague called despair. 
Shakerism is the only cure. As 
long as the plague rages more and 
more people will find the strength 
to take the medicine required, no 
matter how bitter it may seem. 
Perhaps at some future date, the 
very spread of Shakerism will re- 
store Society to health, so that the 
need for Shakerism will again 
slacken. Perhaps the cycle will be 
repeated. Perhaps not. It is impos- 
sible to know what the Father and 
Mother have planned for their 
children. Only one thing is certain. 
The last of the Old Shaker proph- 
etesses wrote in nineteen-fifty- 
six: “The flame may flicker but 
the spark can never be allowed to 
die out until the salvation of the 
world is accomplished.’’ 

I don’t think you’ll find the 
flame flickering here. 

MORE TO COME 



20 



GALAXY 




XEROGRAM: July 1 (11:30 

P.M.) 

TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., 1. 1. 

EROM: Raymond Senter, c/o 
Hudson Junction Rotel 
(WARNING: PERSONALIZED 
ENVELOPE: CONTENTS 

WILL POWDER IE OPENED 
IMPROPERLY) 

Art: 

Cooperation unlimited 
here — until I mention “Pre- 
parative Meeting.” Then 
they all get tongue-tied. Too 
holy for impure ears. No one 
will even say where or when. 
Working hypothesis: It’s a 
compulsory withdrawl ses- 
sion. Recruits obviously 
must kick all worldly habits 
before taking final vows. 
Big question: how do they 
do it? Conscious or uncon- 
scious? Cold-turkey, hypno- 
suggestion, or re-condition- 
ing? Legal or illegal? Even 
Control would like to know. 
I’m taping the Reception 
Deacon tomorrow. If you 
approve. I’ll start putting 
the pressure on. The ground- 
work’s done. We may get a 
story yet. Ray. 



XEROGRAM: July 2(2:15 A.M.) 
TO: Joseph Harger, Coordinator, 
N.Y. State Consumer Con- 
trol, Albany, N.Y. 3111800- 
2311 

FROM: Raymond Senter, c/o 
Hudson Junction Rotel, 
Hudson Junction, N.Y. 
28997601910 

( WARNING: PERSONALIZED 
ENVELOPE: CONTENTS 

WILL POWDER IE OPENED 
IMPROPERLY) 

Joe: 

I appreciate your taking a 
personal interest in this mat- 
ter. My wife obviously gave 
the wrong impression to the 
controller she contacted. 
She tends to get hysterical. 
Despite what she may have 
said I assure you my son’s 
attitude toward the Ghetto 
was a perfectly healthy 
blend of scorn and pity. 
Bruce went with me once to 
see the Harlem Wall — must 
have been six or seven — 
and Coordinator Bill Quaite 
let him sit in the Scanner’s 
chair for a few minutes. He 
heard a muzzein call from 
the top of one of those rick- 




THESHAKER REVIVAL 



21 




ety towers. He saw the wild 
rats prowling in the stench 
and garbage. He also watched 
naked children fighting 
with wooden knives over a 
piece of colored glass. I am 
told there are young people 
today stupid enough to think 
that sneaking over the Wall 
is an adventure and that 
the process is reversible — 
but my son is definitely not 
one of them. And he is cer- 
tainly not' a bomb-thrower. 
I know that you have always 
shared my publication’s 
view that a selective expo- 
sure to the harsher realities 
makes for better consumers. 
(I’m thinking of that little 
snafu in data-traffic in the 
Albany Grid last summer.) I 
hope you’ll see your way 
clear to trusting me again. I 
repeat; there’s not the slight- 
est indication that my son 
was going over to the Blacks. 
In fact, I have good reason 
to believe that he will turn 
up quite soon, with all dis- 
crepancies accounted for. 
But I need a little time. A 
Missing Persons Bulletin 
would only make things 
harder at the moment. I 
realize it was my wife who 
initiated the complaint. But 
I’d greatly appreciate it if 
she got misfiled for 48 hours. 
I’ll handle any static on this 
side. Discreetly, Ray 



TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., 1. 1. 

FROM; Senter 

ENCLOSED: Background tape; 

interview with An- 
tonia Cross, age 19, 
Reception Deacon, 
Jerusalem West 
Edited Transcript, 
July 2. 

Q: (I waited silently for her to 
take the lead.) 

A: Before we begin, I think we 
better get a few things 
straight. It’ll save time and 
grief in the long run. First of 
all, despite what your maga- 
zine and others may have 
said in the past, we never 
proselytize. Never. So please 
don’t use that word. We just 
try to live our Gift — and if 
other people are drawn to 
us, that’s the work of the 
Father and Mother, not us. 
We don’t have to preach. 
When someone’s sitting in 
filth up to his neck he 
doesn’t need a preacher to 
tell him he smells. All he 
needs to hear is that there’s 
a cleaner place somewhere. 
Second, we don’t prevent 
anyone from leaving, despite 
all rumors to the contrary. 
We’ve had exactly three 
apostates in the last four 
years. They found out their 
wheels were not our wheels 
and they left. 

Q; Give me their names. 



22 



GALAXY 




A: There’s no law that says we 
have to disclose the names 
of backsliders. Find them 
yourself. That shouldn’t be 
too hard, now that they’re 
plugged back in to the Big 
Board. 

Q. You overestimate the power 
of the press. 

A: False modesty is not con- 
sidered a virtue among 
Shakers. 

Q; You mentioned three back- 
sliders. Flow many appli- 
cants are turned away be- 
fore taking final vows? 

A; The exact percentage is im- 
material. Some applicants 
are more serious than others. 
There is no great mystery 
about our reception proce- 
dure. You’ve heard the ex- 
pression, “Weekend Shak- 
ers.” Anybody can buy the 
gear and dance and sing and 
stay pure for a couple of 
days. It’s even considered a 
“jolt,” I’m told. We make 
sure that those who come to 
us know the difference be- 
tween a weekend and a life- 
time. We explain the Gift, 
the Creed, the Articles of 
Faith. Then we ask them 
why they’ve come to us. We 
press them pretty hard. In 
the end, if they’re still ser- 
ious, they are sent to Pre- 
parative Meeting for a while, 
until a Family is ready to ac- 
cept them. 

THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



Q: How long is a while? 

A; Preparative Meeting can 
take days or weeks. Or longer. 

Q; Are they considered full- 
fledged Shakers during that 
time? 

A: The moment of Induction is 
a spiritual, not a temporal, 
phenomenon. 

Q: But you notify the author- 
ities only after a recruit is 
accepted in a Family? 




23 




A: We comply with all the re- 
quirements of the Full Dis- 
closure Law. 

Q: What if the recruit is under- 
age and lies about it? Do you 
run a routine DNA check? 

A: We obey the law. 

Q: But a recruit at a Prep 
Meeting isn’t a Shaker and 
so you don’t have to report 
his presence. Is that right? 

A: We’ve had exactly nine com- 
plaints filed against us in 
four years. Not one has 
stuck. 

Q: Then you do delay accept- 
ance until you can trace a 
recruit’s identity? 

A; I didn’t say that. We believe 
in each person’s right to re- 
define his set, no matter 
what the Big Board may say 
about him. But such admin- 
istrative details tend to work 
themselves out. 

Q: How? I don’t understand. 

A: The ways of the Father and 
Mother sometimes passeth 
understanding. 

Q: You say you don’t proselyt- 
ize, but isn’t that what your 
tapes are — a form of preach- 
ing? Don’t most of your re- 
cruits come to you because 
of the tapes? And don’t 
most of them have to be 
brought down from what- 
ever they’re hooked on be- 
fore you’ll even let them in? 

A: The world — your world — is 
filth. From top to bottom. 



We try to stay as far away 
as we can. But we have to 
eat. So we sell you our tapes 
and our Shakerbikes. 
There’s a calculated risk of 
contamination. But it works 
the other way too. Filth can 
be contaminated by purity. 
That’s known as Salvation. 
It’s like a tug of war. We’ll 
see who takes the greatest 
risk. 

Q: That’s what I’m here for — 
to see at first hand. Where 
is the Jerusalem West Pre- 
parative Meeting held? 

A: Preparative Meetings are 
private. For the protection 
of all concerned. 

Q: Don’t you mean secret? Isn’t 
there something going on at 
these meetings that you 
don’t want the public to 
know? 

A: If the public is ignorant of 
the life of the spirit, that is 
hardly our fault. 

Q: Some people believe that 
your recruits are “prepared” 
with drugs or electro-condi- 
tioning. 

A: Some people think that 
Shaker stew is full of salt- 
peter. Are you going to 
print that, too? 

Q: You have been accused of 
brain-tampering. That’s a 
serious charge. And unless I 
get a hell of a lot more co- 
operation from you than I’ve 
been getting I will have to 



24 



GALAXY 




assume that you have some- 
thing serious to hide. 

A; No one ever said you’d be 
free to see everything. You’ll 
just have to accept our — 
guidance — in matters con- 
cerning religious propriety. 

Q; Let me give you a little 
guidance. Miss Cross. You 
people already have so many 
enemies in that filthy world 
you despise that one un- 
friendly story from II. 
might just tip the scales. 

A; The power of the press? 
We’ll take our chances. 

Q: What will you do if the po- 
lice crack down? 

A: We’re not afraid to die. And 
the Control authorities have 
found that it’s more trouble 
than it’s worth to put us in 
jail. We seem to upset the 
other inmates. 

Q; Miss Cross — 

A: We use no titles here. My 
name is Antonia. 

Q: You’re obviously an intel- 
ligent, dedicated young wo- 
man. I would rather work 
with you than against you. 
Why don’t we try to find 
some middle ground? As a 
journalist my primary con- 
cern is human nature — what 
happens to a young recruit 
in the process of becoming a 
full-fledged Shaker. You 
won’t let me into a Prep 
Meeting to see for myself. 
All right, you have your rea- 

THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



sons, and I respect them. 
But I ask you to respect 
mine. If I can look through 
your Reception files — ^just 
the last two or three weeks 
will do — I should be able to 
get some idea of what kind 
of raw material you draw on. 
You can remove the names, 
of course. 

A: Perhaps we can provide a 
statistical breakdown for 
you. 

Q; I don’t want statistics. I 
want to look at their pic- 
tures, listen to their voices — 
you say you press them pret- 
ty hard in the first inter- 
view. That’s what I need: 
their responses under pres- 
sure, the difference between 
those who stick it through 
and those who don’t. 

A: How do we know you’re not 
looking for something of a 
personal nature — to embar- 
rass us? 

Q: For God’s sakes. I’m one of 
the best-known tapemen in 
the Federation. Why not 
just give me the benefit of 
the doubt? 

A; You invoke a Deity that 
means nothing to you. 

Q: I’m sorry. 

A; The only thing I can do is 
transmit your request to the 
Octave itself. Any decision 
on such a matter would have 
to come from a Full Business 
Meeting. 

25 




Q; How long will it take? 

A; The Octave is meeting to- 
morrow, before Evening Ser- 
vice. 

Q: All right. I can wait till 
then. I suppose I should 
apologize again for losing 
my temper. I’m afraid it’s 
an occupational hazard. 

A: We all have our Gift. 

MORE TO COME 

TO; Stock, Ex-Ed., /./. 

EROM; Senter 

ENCLOSED: First add on Shak- 
er Revival; July 3. 

It is unclear whether the eight 
teenagers — six boys and two girls 
— who banded together one fate- 
ful evening in the spring of 1991 
to form a jag-rock combo called 
The Shakers had any idea of the 
religious implications of the name. 
According to one early account in 
RiJJ magazine, the original eight 
were thinking only of a classic 
rock-and-roll number of the nine- 
teen-fifties Shake, Rattle and 
Roll (a title not without sexual as 
well as musicological overtones). 
On the other hand, there is evi- 
dence that Harry G was interested 
in astrology, palmistry, Scientol- 
ogy and other forms of modern 
occultism even before he left 
home at the age of fifteen. (Harry 
G was born Harry Guardino, on 
December eighteen, nineteen- 
seventy-four, in Schoodic, Maine, 



the son of a third-generation lob- 
ster fisherman.) Like many mem- 
bers of his generation he applied 
for a Federal Travel Grant on 
graduation from Modular School 
and 'received a standard two-year 
contract. But unlike most of his 
fellow-bummers, Harry did not 
immediately take off on an all- 
expenses-paid tour of the seamier 
side of life in the North American 
Federation. Instead, he hitched a 
ride to New York City, where he 
established a little basement coop 
on the lower west side that soon 
became a favorite way-station for 
other, more restless bummers 
passing through the city. No re- 
liable account of this period is 
available. The rumors that he 
dabbled in a local Bomb-throwers 
cell appear to be unfounded. But 
it is known that sometime during 
the spring of nineteen-ninety-one 
a group of bummers nearing the 
end of their grants gathered in 
Harry G’s coop to discuss the fu- 
ture. By coincidence or design the 
eight young people who came to- 
gether that night from the far 
corners of the Federation all 
played some instrument and 
shared a passion for jag-rock. And 
as they talked and argued among 
themselves about the best way 
possible to “plug into the Big 
Board,” it slowly began to dawn 
on them that perhaps their des- 
tinies were linked — or, as Harry 
G himself has put it, “We felt we 
could make beautiful music to- 



26 



GALAXY 




gether. Time has made us one.” 

Building a reputation in the jag- 
rock market has never been easy 
— not even with divine interven- 
tion. For the next two months, 
The Shakers scrambled for work, 
playing a succession of one-night 
stands in consumers’ centers, 
schools, fraternal lodges — wher- 
ever someone wanted live enter- 
tainment and was willing to put 
the group up. The Shakers trav- 
eled in a second-hand Chevrolet 
van which was kept running only 
by the heroic efforts of the group’s 
electric-oud player, Richard Fitz- 
gerald (who later — as Richard F — 
helped to design the improved ver- 
sion of the turbo-adapter which 
forms the basis of today’s Shaker- 
bike.) 

On the night of June the first 
the group arrived in Flancock, 
Massachusetts, where they were 
scheduled to play the next evening 
at the graduation dance of the 
Grady L. Parker Modular School. 
They had not' worked for three 
days and their finances had 
reached a most precarious stage — 
they were now sharing only four 
bummer-grants between them, the 
other four contracts having ex- 
pired in the previous weeks. From 
the very beginning of their rela- 
tionship the eight had gone every- 
where and done everything as a 
group — they even insisted on 
sleeping together in one room on 
the theory that the “bad vibra- 
tions” set up by an overnight ab- 



sence from each other might ad- 
versely affect their music. As it 
turned out, there was no room 
large enough at the local Holiday 
Inn, so, after some lengthy nego- 
tiations, the Modular School prin- 
cipal arranged for them to camp 
out on the grounds of the local 
Shaker Museum, a painstaking 
restoration of an early New Eng- 
land Shaker community dating 
back to seventeen-ninety. Amused 
but not unduly impressed by the 
coincidence in names, the eight 
Shakers bedded down, for the 
night within sight of the Muse- 
um’s most famous structure, the 
Round Stone Barn erected by the 
original Shakers in eighteen-twen- 
ty-six. Exactly what happened be- 
tween midnight and dawn on that 
fog-shrouded New England mead- 
ow may never be known — the 
validation of mystical experience 
being by its very nature a some- 
what inexact science. According to 
Shaker testimony, however, the 
spirit of Mother Ann, sainted 
foundress of the original sect, 
touched the Gifts of the eight 
where they lay and in a vision of 
the future — which Amelia D later 
said was “as clear and bright as a 
holograph” — revealed why they 
had been chosen: The time had 
come for a mass revival of Shaker 
beliefs and practices. The eight 
teenagers awoke at the same in- 
stant, compared visions, found 
them to be identical and wept to- 
gether for joy. They spent the rest 



THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



27 




of the day praying for guidance 
and making plans. Their first de- 
cision was to play as scheduled at 
the Grady L. Parker graduation 
dance. 

“We decided to go on doing just 
what we had been doing — only 
more so,” Amelia D later ex- 
plained. “Also, I guess, we needed 
the jacks.” 

WHATEVER the reason, the 
group apparently played as never 
before. Their music opened up 
doors to whole new ways of hear- 
ing and feeling — or so it seemed 
to the excited crowd of seniors who 
thronged around the bandstand 
when the first set was over. With- 
out any premeditation, or so he 
later claimed, Harry Guardino 
stood up and announced the new 
Shaker dispensation, including 
the Believers’ Creed (the Four 
Noes) and a somewhat truncated 
version of the Articles of Faith of 
the United Society of Believers 
(Revived): “All things must be 
kept decent and in good order,” 
“Diversity in Uniformity,” and 
“Work is Play.” According to the 
Hancock newspaper, seventeen 
members of the senior class left 
town that morning with the Shak- 
ers — in three cars “borrowed” 
from parents and later returned. 
Drawn by a Gift of Travel, the lit- 
tle band of pilgrims made their 
way to the quiet corner of New 
York State now known as Jeru- 
salem West, bought some land — 



with funds obtained from anony- 
mous benefactors — and settled 
down to their strange experiment 
in monastic and ascetic commu- 
nism. 

The actual historical connec- 
tions between Old Shakers and 
New Shakers remains a matter of 
conjecture. It is not clear, for in- 
stance, whether Harry G and his 
associates had a chance to consult 
the documentary material on dis- 
play at the Hancock Museum. 
There is no doubt that the First 
Article of Faith of the Shaker Re- 
vival is a word-for-word copy of 
the first part of an early Shaker 
motto. But it has been given a 
subtly different meaning in pres- 
ent-day usage. And while many 
of the New Shaker doctrines and 
practices can be traced to the gen- 
eral tenor of traditional Shaker- 
ism, the adaptations are often 
quite free and sometimes wildly 
capricious. All in all, the Shaker 
Revival seems to be very much a 
product of our own time. Some 
prominent evolutionists even see it 
as part of a natural process of 
weeding out those individuals in- 
capable of becoming fully con- 
suming members of the Abun- 
dant Society. They argue that 
Shakerism is a definite improve- 
ment, in this respect, over the 
youthful cult of Bomb-throwers 
which had to be suppressed in 
the early days of the Federation. 

But there are other observers 
who see a more ominous trend at 



28 



GALAXY 




work. They point especially to the 
serious legal questions raised by 
the Shaker’s efforts at large-scale 
proselytization. The twenty-sev- 
enth Amendment to the Federal 
Constitution guarantees the right 
of each white citizen over the age 
of fifteen to the free and unre- 
stricted enjoyment of his own 
senses, provided that such enjoy- 
ment does not interfere with the 
range or intensity of any other 
citizen’s sensual enjoyment. Pre- 
sumably this protection also ex- 
tends to the right of any white 
citizen to deny himself the usual 
pleasures. But what is the status of 
corporate institutions that engage 
in such repression? How binding, 
for example, is the Shaker re- 
cruit’s sworn allegiance to the Be- 
lievers’ Creed? How are the Four 
Noes enforced within the sect? 
Suppose two Shakers find them- 
selves physically attracted to each 
other and decide to consummate 
does the United Society of Be- 
lievers have any right to place 
obstacles between them? These 
are vital questions that have yet to 
be answered by the Control au- 
thorities. But there are influential 
men in Washington who read the 
twenty-seventh amendment as an 
obligation on the government’s 
part not merely to protect the in- 
dividual’s right to sensual pleas- 
ure but also to help him maxi- 
mize it. And in the eyes of these 
broad constructionists the Shak- 
ers are on shaky ground. 

THESHAKER REVIVAL 



TO; Stock, Ex-Ed., I. /. 

FROM: Senter 

( WA RNJNG: CONFIDENTIA L 
VN EDITED TAPE: NOT EOR 
PUBLICATION: CONTENTS 

WILL POWDER IF OPENED 
IMPROPERLY) 

FIRST VOICE: Bruce? Is that 
you? 

SECOND VOICE: It’s me. 

FIRST: For God’s sake, come 
in! Shut the door. My God, 
I thought you were locked 
up in that Prep Meeting. I 
thought — 

SECOND: It’s not a prison. 
When I heard you were 
prowling around town I 
knew I had to talk to you. 

FIRST: You’ve changed your 
mind then? 

SECOND: Don’t believe it. I 
just wanted to make sure 
you didn’t lie about every- 
thing. 

FIRST: Do they know you’re 
here? 

SECOND: No one followed me, 
if that’s what you mean. No 
one even knows who 1 am. 
I’ve redefined my set, as we 
say. 

FIRST: But they check. 

They’re not fools. They’ll 
find out soon enough — if 
they haven’t already. 

SECOND; They don’t check. 
That’s another lie. And any- 
way, I’ll tell them myself 
after Induction. 



29 




FIRST; Brucie — it’s not too 
late. We want you to come 
home. 

SECOND: You can tell Arlene 
that her little baby is safe 
and sound. How is she? 
Blubbering all over herself 
as usual? 

FIRST: She’s pretty broken up 
-about your running away. 

SECOND: Why? Is she wor- 
ried they’ll cut off her credit 
at the feel-o-mat? For letting 
another potential consumef 
get off the hook? 

FIRST; You wouldn’t have 
risked coming to me if you 
didn’t have doubts. Don’t 
make a terrible mistake. 

SECOND; I came to see you 
because I know how you can 
twist other people’s words. 
Are you recording this? 

FIRST: Yes. 

SECOND: Good. I’m asking 
you straight out — please 
leave us alone. 

FIRST: Do you know they’re 
tampering with your mind? 

SECOND: Have you tasted 
your local drinking water 
lately? 

FIRST: Come home with me. 

SECOND: I am home. 

FIRST; You haven’t seen 
enough of the world to turn 
your back on it. 

SECOND: I’ve seen you and 
Arlene. 

FIRST: And is our life so aw- 
ful? 



SECOND: What you and Ar- 
lene have isn’t life. It’s the 
American Dream Come 
True. You’re in despair and 
don’t even know it. That’s 
the worse kind. 

FIRST: You repeat the slogans 
as if you believed them. 

SECOND: What makes you 
think I don’t? 

FIRST; You’re my flesh and 
blood. I know you. 

SECOND: You don’t. All you 
know is that your little pride 
and joy ran away to become 
a monk and took the family 
genes. And Arlene is too old 
go back to the Big Board 
and beg for seconds. 

FIRST: Look — 1 know a little 
something about rebellion, 
too. I’ve had a taste of it in 
my time. It’s healthy, it’s 
natural — I’m all for it. But 
not an overdose. When the 
jolt wears off, you’ll be stuck 
here. And you’re too smart 
to get trapped in a hole like 
this. 

SECOND: It’s my life, isn’t it? 
In exactly one hour and ten 
minutes I’ll be free, white 
and fifteen — Independence 
Day, right? What a beautiful 
day to be born — it’s the nic- 
est thing you and Arlene did 
for me. 

FIRST; Brucie, we want you 
back. Whatever you want — 
just name it and if it’s in 
my power I’ll try to get it. 1 



30 



GALAXY 




have friends who will help. 

SECOND: I don’t want any- 
thing from you. We’re quits 
— can’t you understand? 

The only thing we have in 
common now is this: 
(SOUND OF HEAVY 
BREATHING). That’s it. 
And if you want that back 
you can take it. Just hold 
your hand over my mouth 
and pinch my nose for about 
five minutes. That should do 
it. 

FIRST: How can you joke 
about it? 

SECOND: Why not? Haven’t 
you heard? There’re only 
two ways to go for my gen- 
eration — The Shakers or the 
Ghetto. How do you think 
I’d look in black-face with 
bushy hair and a gorilla 
nose? Or do you prefer my 
first choice? 

FIRST: I’m warning you, the 
country’s not going to put 
up with either much longer. 
There’s going, to be trouble 
— and I want you out of 
here when it comes. 

SECOND: What are the fee- 
bies going to do? Finish our 
Job for us? 

FIRST: Is that what you want 
then? To commit suicide? 

SECOND: Not exactly. That’s 
what the Bomb-throwers did. 
We want to commit your 
suicide. 

FIRST: (Words unintelligible.) 

THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



SECOND: That really Jolts 
you, doesn’t it? You talk 
about rebellion as if you 
knew something about it 
because you wore beads 
once and ran around hold- 
ing signs. 

FIRST: We changed history. 

SECOND: You didn’t change 
anything. You were swal- 
lowed up. Just like the 
Bomb-throwers. The only 
difference is, you were eaten 
alive. 

FIRST: Bruce — 

SECOND: Can you stretch the 
gray-stuff a little, and try to 
imagine what real rebellion 
would be like? Not Just an- 
other chorus of “gimme, 
gimme, gimme — ’’ But the 
absolute negation of what’s 
come before? The Four Noes 
all rolled up into One Big 
No! 

FIRST: Brucie — I’ll make a 
deal — 

SECOND: No one’s ever put it 
all together before. I don’t 
expect you to see it. Even 
around here, a lot of people 
don’t know what’s happen- 
ing. Expiation! That’s what 
rebellion is all about. The 
young living down the sins 
of the fathers and mothers! 
But the young are always so 
hungry for life they get dis- 
tracted before they can fin- 
ish the Job. Look at all the 
poor, doomed rebels in his- 

31 




tory whenever they got too 
big to be crushed the feebies 
bought them off with a piece 
of the action. The stick or 
the carrot and then — busi- 
ness as usual. Your genera- 
tion was the biggest sellout 
of all. But the big laugh is, 
you really thought you won. 
So now you don’t have any 
carrot left to offer, because 
you’ve already shared it all 
with us — before we got old. 
And we’re strong enough to 
laugh at your sticks. Which 
is why the world is going to 
find out for the first time 
what total rebellion is. 

FIRST: I thought you didn’t 
believe in violence and hate? 

SECOND: Oh, our strength is 
not of this world. You can 
forget all the tapes and bikes 
and dances — that’s the im- 
pure shell that must be 
sloughed off. If you want to 
get the real picture, just 
imagine us — all your pre- 
cious little gene-machines — 
standing around in a circle, 
our heads bowed in prayer, 
holding our breaths and 
clicking off one by one. 
Don’t you think that’s a 
beautiful way for your 
world to end? Not with a 
bang or a whimper — but 
with one long breathless 
Amen? 

MORE TO COME 



TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., 1 . 1 . 

FROM: Senter 

ENCLOSED: New first add on 
“Shaker Revival’’ 
(scratch earlier 
transmission; new 
lead upcoming). 



JERUSALEM WEST, N.Y., 
Wednesday, July 4 — An early crit- 
ic of the Old Shakers, a robust 
pamphleteer who had actually 
been a member of the sect for ten 
months, wrote this prophetic ap- 
praisal of his former cohorts in the 
year seventeen-eighty-two: “When 
we consider the infant state of 
civil power in America since the 
Revolution began, every infringe- 
ment on the natural rights of hu- 
manity, every effort to undermine 
our original constitution, either in 
civil or ecclesiastical order, saps 
the foundation of Independency.” 
That winter, the Shaker foun- 
dress, Mother Ann, was seized in 
Petersham, Massachusetts, by a 
band of vigilantes who, according 
to a contemporary account, 
wanted “to find out whether she 
was a woman or not.” Various 
other Shaker leaders were horse- 
whipped, thrown in jail, tarred 
and feathered and driven out of 
one New England town after an- 
other by an aroused citizenry. 
These severe persecutions, which 
lasted through the turn of the cen- 
tury, were the almost inevitable 
outcome of a clash between the 
self-righteous, unnatural, uncom- 



32 



GALAXY 




promising doctrines of the Shakers 
— and the pragmatic, democratic, 
forward-looking mentality of the 
struggling new nation, which 
would one day be summed up in 
that proud emblem: The American 
Way of Life. 

This conflict is no less sharp to- 
day. So far the New Shakers have 
generally been given the benefit of 
the doubt as just another harm- 
less fringe group. But there is evi- 
dence that the mood of the coun- 
try is changing -and rapidly. 
Leading educators and political 
figures, respected clergymen and 
prominent consumer consultants 
have all become more outspoken 
in denouncing the disruptive ef- 
fect of this new fanaticism on the 
country as a whole. Not since the 
heyday of the Bomb-throwers in 
the late Seventies has a single is- 
sue shown such potential for gal- 
vanizing informed public opinion. 
And a chorus of distraught par- 
ents has only Just begun to make 
itself heard — like the lamentations 
of Rachel in the wilderness. 

Faced with the continuing pre- 
cariousness of the international 
situation, and the unresolved di- 
lemma of the Ghettoes, some Con- 
trol authorities have started talk- 
ing about new restrictions on all 
monastic sects — not out of any de- 
sire to curtail religious freedom 
but in an effort to preserve the 
constitutional guarantees of free 
expression and consumption. 
Some feel that if swift, firm gov- 

THE SHAKER REVIVAL 



ernmental action is not forthcom- 
ing it will get harder and harder 
to prevent angry parents — and 
others with legitimate grievances 
— from taking the law into their 
own hands. 

MORE TO COME ★ 




33 




THEODORE STURGEON 



She was lost in terror — he was 
beyond it. They could survive 
only if they abandoned reason! 

He didn’t know who he was when she 
met him — well, not many people did. He 
was in the high orchard doing something 
under a pear tree. The land smelled of 



late summer and wind — bronze, 
it smelled bronze. 

He looked up at a compact girl 
in her mid-twenties, at a fearless 
face and eyes the same color as her 
hair, which was extraordinary be- 
cause her hair was red-gold. She 
looked down at a leather-skinned 
man in his forties, at a gold-leaf 
electroscope in his hand, and felt 
she was an intruder. 

She said, “Oh—” in what was 
apparently the right way. 

Because he nodded once and 
said, “Hold this — ” and there 
could then be no thought of intru- 
sion. 

She kneeled down beside him 
and took the instrument, holding 
it exactly where he positioned her 
hand. He moved away a little and 
struck a tuning fork against his 
kneecap. 

“What’s it doing?” 

He had a good voice, the kind 
of voice strangers notice and listen 
to, 

She looked at the delicate leaves 
of gold in the glass shield of the 
electroscope. 

“They’re moving apart.” 

He struck the tuning fork again 
and the leaves pressed away from 
one another. 

“Much?” 

“About forty-five degrees when 
you hit the fork.” 

“Good — that’s about the most 
we’ll get.” From a pocket of his 
bush jacket he drew a sack of 
chalk dust and dropped a small 



handful on the ground. “I’ll move 
now. You stay right there and tell 
me how much the leaves sep- 
arate.” 

He traveled around the pear 
tree in a zigzag course, striking his 
tuning fork while she called out 
numbers — ten degrees, thirty, five, 
twenty, nothing. Whenever the 
gold foil pressed apart to maxi- 
mum — forty degrees or more — he 
dropped more chalk. When he was 
finished the tree was surrounded 
by a rough oval of white dots. He 
took out a notebook and dia- 
gramed them and the tree, put 
away the book and took the elec- 
troscope out of her hands. 

“Were you looking for some- 
thing?” he asked her. 

“No,” she said. “Yes.” 

He could smile. Though it did 
not last long she found the expres- 
sion surprising in a face like his. 

“That’s not what is called, in a 
court of law, a responsive answer.” 

She glanced across the hillside, 
metallic in that late light. There 
wasn’t much on it — rocks, weeds 
the summer was done with, a tree 
or so, the orchard. Anyone pres- 
ent had come a long way to get 
here. 

“It wasn’t a simple question,” 
she said, tried to smile and burst 
into tears. 

She was sorry and said so. 

“Why?” he asked. 

This was the first time she was 
to experience this ask-the-next- 
question thing of his. It was un- 



36 



GALAXY 




settling. It always would be — 
never less, sometimes a great deal 
more. 

“Well — one doesn’t have emo- 
tional explosions in public.” 

“You do. I don’t know this ‘one’ 
you’re talking about.” 

“I — guess I don’t either, now 
that you mention it.” 

“Tell the truth then. No sense 
in going around and around about 
it: He'll think that I . . . and the 
like. I’ll think what I think, what- 
ever you say. Or — go down the 
mountain and just don’t say any 
more.” She did not turn to go, so 
he added; “Try the truth, then. If 
it’s important, it’s simple. And if 
it’s simple it’s easy to say.” 

“I’m going to die!” she cried. 

“So am I.” 

“I have a lump in my breast.” 
“Come up to the house and I’ll 
fix it.” 

ITHOUT another word he 
turned away and started 
through the orchard. Startled half 
out of her wits, indignant and full 
of insane hope, experiencing, even, 
a quick curl of astonished laughter, 
she stood for a moment watching 
him go and then found herself (at 
what point did I decide?) running 
after him. 

She caught up with him on the 
uphill margin of the orchard. 

“Are you a doctor?” 

He appeared not to notice that 
she had waited, had run. 

“No,” he said and, walking on. 



appeared not to see her stand 
again pulling at her lower lip, then 
run again to catch up. 

“I must be out of my mind,” she 
said, joining him on a garden path. 

She said it to herself. He must 
have known because he did not 
answer. The garden was alive with 
defiant chrysanthemums and a 
pond in which she saw the flicker 
of a pair of redcap imperials — sil- 
ver, not gold fish — the largest she 
had ever seen. Then — the house. 

First it was part of the garden 
with its colonnaded terrace — and 
then, with its rock walls (too mas- 
sive to be called fieldstone) part of 
the mountain. It was on and in the 
hillside. Its roofs paralleled the 
skylines, front and sides, and part 
of it was backed against an out- 
jutting cliff face. The door, 
beamed and studded and featur- 
ing two archers’ slits, was opened 
for them (but there was no one 
there) and when it closed it was 
silent, a far more solid exclusion of 
things outside than any click or 
clang of latch or bolt. 

She stood with her back against 
it watching him cross what seemed 
to be the central well of the house, 
or at least this part of it. It was a 
kind of small court in the center of 
which was an atrium, glazed on all 
of its five sides and open to the sky 
at the top. In it was a tree, a cy- 
press or juniper, gnarled and 
twisted and with the turnedback, 
paralleled, sculptured appearance 
of what the Japanese call bonsai. 




SLOW SCULPTURE 



37 




“Aren’t you coming?” he called, 
holding open a door behind the 
atrium. 

“Bonsai just aren’t fifteen feet 
tall,” she said. 

“This one is.” 

She walked past it slowly, look- 
ing. 

“How long have you had it?” 

His tone of voice said he was im- 
mensely pleased. It is a clumsiness 
-to ask the owner of a bonsai how 
old it is — you are then demanding 
to know if it is his work or if he has 
acquired and continued the con- 
cept of another; you are tempting 
him to claim for his own the con- 
cept and the meticulous labor of 
someone else and it becomes rude 
to tell a man he is being tested. 
Hence, How long have you had it? 
is polite, forbearing, profoundly 
courteous. 

He answered, “Half my life.” 

She looked at the tree. Trees 
can be found, sometimes, not quite 
discarded, not quite forgotten, 
potted in rusty gallon cans in not 
quite successful nurseries, unsold 
because they are shaped oddly or 
have dead branches here and there, 
or because they have grown too 
slowly in whole or part. These are 
the ones which develop interesting 
trunks and a resistance to misfor- 
tune that makes them flourish if 
given the least excuse for living. 
This one was far older than half 
this man’s life, or all of it. Looking 
at it, she was terrified by the un- 
bidden thought that a fire, a fam- 

38 ’ 



ily of squirrels, some subterranean 
worm or termite could end this 
beauty — something working out- 
side any concept of rightness or 
justice or — of respect. 

She looked at the tree. She 
looked at the man. 

“Coming?” 

“Yes,” she said and went with 
him into his laboratory. “Sit down 
over there and relax,” he told her. 
“This might take a little while.” 

“Over there” was a big leather 
chair by the bookcase. The books 
were right across the spectrum — 
reference works in medicine and 
engineering, nuclear physics, 
chemistry, biology, psychiatry. Al- 
so tennis, gymnastics, chess, the 
oriental war game Go, and golf. 
And then drama, the techniques of 
fiction. Modern English Usage, 
The American Language and sup- 
plement, Wood’s and Walker’s 
Rhyming Dictionaries and an ar- 
ray of other dictionaries and en- 
cyclopedias. A whole long shelf of 
biographies. 

“ Y ou have quite a library.” 

He answered her rather shortly 
— clearly he did not want to talk 
just now, for he was very busy. 

He said only, “Yes I have — per- 
haps you’ll see it some time — ” 
which left her to pick away at his 
words to find out what on earth he 
meant by them. 

He could only have meant, she 
decided, that the books beside her 
chair were what he kept handy for 
his work — that his real library was 



GALAXY 




elsewhere. She looked at him with 
a certain awe. 

A nd she watched him. She liked 
the way he moved — swiftly, de- 
cisively. Clearly he knew what he 
was doing. He used some equip- 
ment that she recognized — a glass 
still, titration equipment, a centri- 
fuge. There were two refrigerators, 
one of which was not a refrigerator 
at all, for she could see the large 
indicator on the door. It stood at 
70°F. It came to her that a modern 
refrigerator is perfectly adaptable 
to the demand for controlled en- 
vironment, even a warm one. 

But all that — and the equipment 
she did not recognize — was only 
furniture. It was the man who was 
worth watching, the man who kept 
her occupied so that not once in 
all the long time she sat there was 
she tempted toward the book- 
shelves. 

At last he finished a long se- 
quence at the bench, threw some 
switches, picked up a tall stool and 
came over to her. He perched on 
the stool, hung his heels on the 
cross-spoke and lay a pair of long 
brown hands over his knees. 
“Scared.” 

He made it a statement. 

“I suppose I am.” 

“You don’t have to stay.” 
“Considering the alternative — ” 
she began bravely but the courage- 
sound somehow oozed out. “It 
can’t matter much.” 

“Very sound,” he said almost 



cheerfully. “I remember when I 
was a kid there was a fire scare 
in the apartment house where we 
lived. It was a wild scramble to get 
out and my ten-year-old brother 
found himself outside in the street 
with an alarm clock in his hand. It 
was an old one and it didn’t work — 
but of all the things in the place he 
might have snatched up at a time 
like that, it turned out to be the 
clock. He’s never been able to fig- 
ure out why.” 

“Have you?” 

“Not why he picked that partic- 
ular thing — no. But I think I know 
why he did something obviously 
irrational. You see, panic is a very 
special state. Like fear and flight, 
or fury and attack, it’s a pretty 
primitive reaction to extreme dan- 
ger. It’s one of the expressions of 
the will to survive. What makes it 
so special is that it’s irrational. 
Now, why would the abandonment 
of reason be a survival mech- 
anism?” 

She thought about this seriously. 
There was that about this man 
which made serious thought im- 
perative. 

“I can’t imagine,” she said fi- 
nally. “Unless it’s because, in 
some situations, reason just 
doesn’t work.” 

“You can imagine,” he said, 
again radiating that huge approval, 
making her glow. “And you just 
did. If you are in danger and you 
try reason and reason doesn’t work 
— you abandon it. You can’t say 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



39 




it’s unintelligent to abandon what 
doesn’t work, right? So then you 
are in panic. You start to perform 
random acts. Most of them — far 
and away most — will be useless. 
Some might even be dangerous. 
But that doesn’t matter — you’re in 
danger already. Where the survival 
factor comes in is that away down 
deep you know that one chance in 
a million is better than no chance 
at all. So — here you sit — you’re 
scared and you could run. Some- 
thing says you should run but you 
won’t.” 

She nodded. 

He went on: “You found a lump. 
You went to a doctor and he made 
some tests and gave you the bad 
news. Maybe you went to another 
doctor and he confirmed it. You 
then did some research and found 
out what was to happen next — the 
exploratory, the radical, the ques- 
tionable recovery, the whole long 
agonizing procedure of being what 
they call a terminal case. You then 
flipped out. Did some things you 
hope I won’t ask you about. Took 
a trip somewhere, anywhere, 
wound up in my orchard for no 
reason.” He spread the good hands 
and let them go back to their kind 
of sleep. “Panic. The reason for 
little boys in their pajamas stand- 
ing at midnight with a broken 
alarm clock in their arms — and for 
the existence of quacks.” Some- 
thing chimed over on the bench 
and he gave her a quick smile and 
went back to work, saying over his 



shoulder, “I’m not a quack, by 
the way. To qualify as a quack you 
have to claim to be a doctor. I 
don’t.” 

She watched him switch off, 
switch on, stir, measure and calcu- 
late. A little orchestra of equip- 
ment chorused and soloed around 
him as he conducted, whirring, 
hissing, clicking, flickering. She 
wanted to laugh, to cry and to 
scream. She did not one of these 
things for fear of not stopping, 
ever. 

When he came over again, the 
conflict was not raging within her 
but was exerting steady and op- 
posed tensions. The result was a 
terrible stasis and all she could do 
when she saw the instrument in his 
hand was to widen her eyes. She 
quite forgot to breathe. 

“Yes, it’s a needle,” he said, his 
tone almost bantering. “A long 
shiny sharp needle. Don’t tell me 
you are one of those needle-shy 
people.” He flipped the long power 
cord that trailed from the black 
housing around the hypodermic 
to get some slack, straddled the 
stool. “Want something to steady 
your nerves?” 

She was afraid to speak. The 
membrane containing her sane self 
was very thin, stretched very tight. 

He said, “I’d rather you didn’t, 
because this pharmaceutical stew 
is complex enough as it is. But if 
you need it — ” 

She managed to shake her head 
a little and again felt the wave of 



40 



GALAXY 




approval from him. There were a 
thousand questions she wanted to 
ask — had meant to ask — needed to 
ask. What was in the needle? How 
many treatments must she have? 
What would they be like? How long 
must she stay and where? And 
most of all — oh, could she live, 
could she live? 

II 

H e SEEMEDconcerned with the 
answer to only one of these. 
“It’s mostly built around an 
isotope of potassium. If I told you 
all I know about it and how I came 
on it in the first place it would take 
— well, more time than we’ve got. 
But here’s the general idea. Theo- 
retically, every atorh is electrically 
balanced — never mind ordinary 
exceptions. Likewise all electrical 
charges in the molecule are sup- 
posed to be balanced — so much 
plus, so much minus, total zero. I 
happened on the fact that the bal- 
ance of charges in a wild cell is not 
zero — not quite. It’s as if there 
were a submicroscopic thunder- 
storm going on at the molecular 
level, with little lightning bolts 
flashing back and forth and chang- 
ing the signs. Interfering with com- 
munications — static — and that,” 

he said, gesturing with the shielded 
hypo in his hand, “is what this is 
all about. When something inter- 
feres with communications — espe- 
cially the RNA mechanism that 
says. Read this blueprint, build ac- 
cordingly and stop when it’s done 



— when that message gets garbled 
lopsided things get built. Off bal- 
ance things. Things that do almost 
what they should, do it almost 
right — they’re wild cells and the 
messages they pass on are even 
worse. 

“Okay. Whether these thunder- 
storms are caused by viruses or 
chemicals or radiation or ph'ysical 
trauma or even anxiety — and don’t 
think anxiety can’t do it — is secon- 
dary. The important thing is to fix 
it so the thunderstorm can’t hap- 
pen. If you can do that the cells 
have plenty of ability all by them- 
selves to repair and replace what’s 
gone wrong. And biological sys- 
tems aren’t like ping-pong balls 
with static charges waiting for the 
charge to leak away or to discharge 
into a grounded wire. They have a 
kind of resilience — I call it forgive- 
ness — that enables them to take on 
a little more charge, or a little less, 
and do all right. Well, then — say a 
certain clump of cells is wild and 
say it carries an aggregate of a hun- 
dred units extra on the positive 
side. Cells immediately around it 
are affected — but not the next lay- 
er or the next. 

“If they could be opened to the 
extra charge — if they could help to 
drain it off — they would, well, cure 
the wild cells of the surplus. You 
see what I mean? And they would 
be able to handle that little over- 
age themselves or pass it on to 
other cells and still others who 
could deal with it. In other words. 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



41 




if I can flood your body with a 
medium that can drain off and dis- 
tribute a concentration of this un- 
balanced charge, the ordinary bod- 
ily processes will be free to move 
in and clear up the wild-cell dam- 
age. And that’s what I have here.” 

He held the shielded needle be- 
tween his knees and from a side 
pocket of his lab coat he took a 
plastic box, opened it and drew out 
an alcohol swab. Still cheerfully 
talking, he took her terror- 
numbed arm and scrubbed at the 
inside of her elbow. 

“1 am not for one second im- 
plying that nuclear charges in the 
atom are the same thing as static 
electricity. They’re in a different 
league altogether. But the analogy 
holds. I could use another analogy. 
I could liken the charge in the wild 
cells to accumulations of fat. And 
this gunk of mine to a detergent 
that would break it up and spread 
it so far it couldn’t be detected any 
more. But I’m led to the static 
analogy by an odd side effect — 
organisms injected with this stuff 
do build up one hell of a static 
charge. It’s a byproduct and, for 
reasons I can only theorize about 
at the moment, it seems to be 
keyed to the audio spectrum. Tun- 
ing forks and the like. That’s what 
I was playing with when I met you. 
That tree is drenched with this 
stuff. It used to have a whorl of 
wild-cell growth. It hasn’t any 
more.” 

He gave her the quick, surpris- 



ing smile and let it flicker away as 
he held the needle point upward 
and squirted it. With his other 
hand wrapped around her left bi- 
cep he squeezed gently and firmly. 
The needle was lowered and placed 
and slid into the big vein so deftly 
that she gasped — not because it 
hurt but because it did not. Atten- 
tively he watched the bit of glass 
barrel protruding from the black 
housing as he withdrew the plun- 
ger a fraction and saw the puff of 
red into the colorless fluid inside. 

Then he bore steadily on the 
plunger again. 

P LEASE don’t move. I’m sorry, 
this will take a little time. I 
have to get quite a lot of this into 
you. Which is fine, you know,” he 
said, resuming the tone of his pre- 
vious remarks about audio spectra, 
“because side effect or no, it’s con- 
sistent. Healthy bio systems de- 
velop a strong electrostatic field, 
unhealthy ones a weak one or none 
at all. With an instrument as prim- 
itive and simple as that little elec- 
troscope you can tell if any part of 
the organism has a community of 
wild cells and if so, where it is and 
how big and how wild.” Deftly he 
shifted his grip on the encased hy- 
podermic without moving the point 
or varying the plunger pressure. It 
was beginning to be uncomfortable 
— an ache turning into a bruise. 
“And if you’re wondering why this 
mosquito has a housing on it with 
a wire attached (although I’ll bet 



42 



GALAXY 




you’re not and that you know as 
well as I do that I’m doing all this 
talking just to keep your mind oc- 
cupied) I’ll tell you. It’s nothing 
but a coil carrying a high-frequen- 
cy alternating current. The alter- 
nating field sees to it that the fluid 
is magnetically and electrostat- 
ically neutral right from the start.” 

He withdrew the needle sudden- 
ly and smoothly, bent an arm and 
trapped in the inside of her elbow 
a cotton swab. 

“Nobody ever told me that af- 
ter a treatment,” she said. 

“What?” 

“No charge,” she said. 

Again that wave of approval, 
this time with words: “I like your 
style. How do you feel?” 

She cast about for accurate 
phrases. 

“Like the owner of a large sleep- 
ing hysteria begging someone not 
to wake it up.” 

He laughed. 

“In a little while you are going 
to feel so weird you won’t have 
time for hysteria.” 

He got up and returned the nee- 
dle to the bench, looping up the 
cable as he went. He turned off 
the AC field and returned with a 
large glass bowl and a square of 
plywood. He inverted the bowl on 
the floor near her and placed the 
wood on its broad base. 

“I remember something like 
that,” she said. “When I was in — 
in junior high school. They were 
generating artificial lightning with 



a — let me see — well, it had a long, 
endless belt running over pulleys 
and some little wires scraping on 
it and a big copper ball on top.” 
“Van de Graaf generator.” 
“Right. And they did all sorts of 
things with it. But what I specially 
remember is standing on a piece of 
wood on a bowl like that and they 
charged me up with the generator. 
1 didn’t feel much of anything ex- 
cept all my hair stood out from my 
head. Everyone laughed. I looked 
like a golliwog. They said I was 
carrying forty thousand volts.” 
“Good. I’m glad you remember 
that. This’ll be a little different, 
though. By roughly another forty 
thousand.” 

“Oh!” 

“Don’t worry. As long as you’re 
insulated and as long as grounded 
or comparatively grounded ob- 
jects — me, for example — stay well 
away from you, there won’t be any 
fireworks.” 

“Are you going to use a genera- 
tor like that?” 

“Not like that — and I already 
did. You’re the generator.” 

“I’m — oh!” She had raised her 
hand from the upholstered chair 
arm and there was a crackle of 
sparks and the faint smell of 
ozone. 

“You sure are and more than I 
thought — and quicker. Get up.” 
She started up slowly. She fin- 
ished the maneuver with speed. As 
her body separated from the chair 
she was, for a fractional second. 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



43 




seated in a tangle of spitting blue- 
white threads. They, or she, pro- 
pelled her a yard and a half away, 
standing. Literally shocked half 
out of her wits, she almost fell. 

“Stay on your feet,” he snapped 
and she recovered, gasping. He 
stepped back a pace. “Get up on 
the board. Quickly now.” 

She did as she was told, leaving, 
for the two paces she traveled, two 
brief footprints of fire. She tee- 
tered on the board. Visibly, her 
hair began to stir. 

“What’s happening to me?” she 
cried. 

“You’re getting charged after 
all,” he said jovially but at this 
point she failed to appreciate the 
extension of even her own witti- 
cism. 

She cried again, “What’s hap- 
pening to me?” 

“It’s all right,” he said consol- 
ingly. 

He went to the bench and 
turned on a tone generator. It 
moaned deep in the one to three 
hundred cycle range. He increased 
the volume and turned the pitch 
control. It bowled upward and, as 
it did so, her red-gold hair shivered 
and swept up and out, each hair 
attempting frantically to get away 
from all the others. He ran the 
tone up above ten thousand cycles 
and all the way back to a belly- 
bumping inaudible eleven. At 
tbe extremes her hair slumped but 
at around eleven hundred it stood 
out in, as she had described it, 



golliwog style. She could feel it. 

He turned down the gain to a 
more or less bearable level and 
picked up the electroscope. He 
came toward her, smiling. 

“You are an electroscope, you 
know that? And a living Van de 
Graaf generator as well. And a 
golliwog.” 

“Let me down,” was all she 
could say. 

“Not yet. Please hang tight. The 
differential between you and 
everything else here is so high that 
if you got near any of it you’d dis- 
charge into it. It wouldn’t harm 
you — it isn’t current electricity — 
but you might get a burn and a 
nervous shock out of it.” He held 
out the electroscope. Even at that 
distance — and in her distress — she 
could see the gold leaves writhe 
apart. He circled her, watching the 
leaves attentively, moving the in- 
strument forward and back and 
from side to side. Once he went to 
the tone generator and turned it 
down some more. “You’re sending 
such a strong field I can’t pick up 
the variations,” he explained and 
returned to her, coming closer 
now. 

“I can’t — much more — I can’t,” 
she murmured. 

He did not hear or he did not 
care. He moved the electroscope 
near her abdomen, up and from 
side to side. 

“Yup. There you are,” he said 
cheerfully, moving the instrument 
close to her right breast. 



44 



GALAXY 




“What?” she whimpered. 

“Your cancer. Right breast, low, 
around toward the armpit.” He 
whistled. “A mean one, too. Ma- 
lignant as hell.” 

She swayed and then collapsed 
forward and down. A sick black- 
ness swept down on her, receded 
explosively in a glare of agonizing 
blue-white and then crashed down 
on her like a mountain falling. 

Place where wall meets ceiling. 
Another wall, another ceiling. 
Hadn't seen it before. Didn't mat- 
ter. Don't care. 

Sleep. 

Place where wall meets ceiling. 
Something in the way. His face, 
close, drawn, tired — eyes awake, 
though, and penetrating. Doesn't 
matter. Don't care. 

Sleep. 

Place where wall meets ceiling. 
Down a bit, late sunlight. Over a 
little, rusty-gold chrysanthemums 
in a gold-green glass cornucopia. 
Something in the way again — his 
face. 

"Can you hear me?" 

Yes, but don't answer. Don't 
move. Don't speak. 

Sleep. 

It's a room, a wall, a table, a 
man pacing — a nighttime window 
and mums you'd think were alive 
but don't you know they're cut 
right off and dying? 



Do they know that? 

"How are you?" 

Urgent, urgent. 

"Thirsty." 

C OLD and a bite to it that aches 
the hinges of the jaws. Grape- 
fruit juice. Lying back on his arm 
while he holds the glass in the oth- 
er hand. 

Oh, no, that's not . . . 

“Thank you. Thanks very — ” 

Try to sit up. The sheet — my 
clothes! 

“Sorry about that,” he said, the 
mindreader-almost. “Some things 
that have to be done just aren't 
consistent with pantyhose and a 
minidress. All washed and dried 
and ready for you, though — any 
time. Over there.” 

The brown wool and the panty- 
hose and the shoes, on the chair. 

He's respectful, standing back, 
putting the glass next to an insu- 
lated carafe on the night table. 
“What things?” 

“Throwing up. Bedpans,” he 
said candidly. 

Protective with the sheet, which 
can hide bodies but — oh — not em- 
barrassment. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Oh. I 
must have — ” 

Shake head and he slides back 
and forth in the vision. 

“You went into shock and then 
you just didn’t come out of it.” 

He hesitated. It was the first 
time she had ever seen him hesi- 
tate over anything. She became for 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



45 




a moment an almost-mindreader. 

Should I tell her what's in my 
mind? 

Sure, he should. And he did. 

“You didn’t want to come out 
of it.” 

“It’s all gone out of my head.” 

“The pear tree, the electroscope. 
The injection, the electrostatic re- 
sponse.” 

“No,” she said, not knowing. 
Then, knowing: “No!” 

“Hang on,” he rapped and next 
thing she knew he was by the bed, 
over her, his two hands hard on 
her cheeks. “Don’t slip off again. 
You can handle it. You can han- 
dle it because it’s all right now, do 
you understand that? You’re all 
right.” 

“You told me I had cancer.” 

She sounded pouty, accusing. 

He laughed at her, actually 
laughed. 

“You told me you had it.” 

“Oh, but I didn’t know.” 

“That explains it, then,” he said 
in a load-off-my-back tone. “There 
wasn’t anything in what I did that 
could cause a three-day withdraw- 
al like that. It had to be some- 
thing in you.” 

“Three days!” 

He simply nodded and went on 
with what he was saying. 

“I get a little pompous once in 
a while,” he said engagingly. 
“Comes from being right so much 
of the time. Took a bit more for 
granted than I should have, didn’t 
I? When I assumed you’d been to 



a doctor, maybe even had a bi- 
opsy? You hadn’t, had you?” 

“I was afraid,” she admitted. 
She looked at him. “My mother 
died of it — and my aunt — and my 
sister had a radical mastectomy. I 
couldn’t bear it. And when you — ” 
“When 1 told you what you al- 
ready knew and what you never 
wanted to hear — you couldn’t take 
it. You blacked right out, you 
know. Fainted away. And it had 
nothing to do with the seventy-odd 
thousand volts of static you were 
carrying. I caught you.” He put 
out his arms where they were, on 
display, until she looked at them 
and saw the angry red scorch 
marks on his forearms and heavy 
biceps, as much of them as she 
could see from under his short- 
sleeved shirt. “About nine-tenths 
knocked me out too,” he said. 
“But at least you didn’t crack your 
head or anything.” 

“Thank you,” she said reflex- 
ively and then began to cry. 
“What am I going to do?” 

“Do? Go back home, wherever 
that is— pick up your life again, 
whatever that might mean.” 

“But you said — ” 

“When are you going to get it 
into your head that what 1 did was 
not a diagnostic?” 

“Are you — did you — you mean 
you cured it?” 

“I mean you’re curing it right 
now. I explained it all to you be- 
fore. You remember that now, 
don’t you?” 



46 



GALAXY 




“Not altogether but — yes.” Sur- 
reptitiously (but not enough, be- 
cause he saw her) she felt under 
the sheet for the lump. “It’s still 
there.” 

“If I bopped you over the head 
with a bat,” he said with slightly 
exaggerated simplicity, “there 
would be a lump on it. It would be 
there tomorrow and the next day. 
The day after that it might be 
smaller. In a week you’d still be 
able to feel it but it would be gone. 
Same thing here.” 

At last she let the enormity of 
it touch her. “A one-shot cure for 
cancer — ” 

“Oh, God,” he said harshly. “1 
can tell by looking at you that 1 
am going to have to listen to that 
speech again. Well, I won’t.” 

S TARTLED, she asked “What 
speech?” 

“The one about my duty to hu- 
manity. It comes in two phases 
and many textures. Phase one has 
to do with my duty to humanity 
and really means we could make a 
classic buck with it. Phase two 
deals solely with my duty to hu- 
manity and I don’t hear that one 
very often. Phase two utterly over- 
looks the reluctance humanity has 
to accept good things unless they 
arrive from accepted and respect- 
able sources. Phase one is fully 
aware of this but gets rat shrewd 
in figuring ways around it.” 

She said, “I don’t — ” but could 
get no farther. 



“The textures,” he overrode her, 
“are accompanied by the light of 
revelation, with or without religion 
and/or mysticism. Or they are cast 
sternly in the ethical-philosophy 
mold and aim to force me to sur- 
render through guilt mixed — to 
some degree all the way up to total 
— with compassion.” 

“But I only—” 

“You,” he'said, aiming a long 
index finger at her, “have robbed 
yourself of the choicest example of 
everything I have just said. If my 
assumptions had been right and 
you had gone to your friendly local 
sawbones — and he had diagnosed 
cancer and referred you to a spe- 
cialist and he had done likewise 
and sent you to a colleague for 
consultation and, in random panic, 
you had fallen into my hands and 
been cured — and had gone back 
to your various doctors to report 
a miracle, do you know what you’d 
have gotten from them? ‘Sponta- 
neous remission,’ that’s what you’d 
have gotten. And it wouldn’t be 
only doctors,” he went on with a 
sudden renewal of passion, under 
which she quailed in her bed. 
“Everybody has his own commer- 
cial. Your nutritionist would have 
nodded over his wheat germ or his 
macrobiotic rice cakes, your priest 
would have dropped to his knees 
and looked at the sky, your gene- 
ticist would have a pet theory 
about generation-skipping and 
would assure you that your grand- 
parents probably had spontaneous 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



47 




remissions, too, and never knew 
it.” 

“Please!” she cried but he 
shouted at her. 

“Do you know what I am? I am 
an engineer twice over, mechani- 
cal and electrical — and 1 have a 
law degree. If you were foolish 
enough to tell anyone about what 
has happened here (which I hope 
you aren’t — but if you are 1 know 
how to protect myself) I could be 
jailed for practicing medicine with- 
out a lic.ense. You could have me 
up for assault because I stuck a 
needle into you and even for kid- 
naping if you could prove I car- 
ried you in here from the lab. No- 
body would give a damn that I had 
cured your cancer. You don’t 
know who I am, do you?” 

“No. 1 don’t even know your 
name.” 

“And I won’t tell you. I don’t 
know your name either — ” 

“Oh! It’s—” 

“Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! I 
don’t want to hear it. I wanted to 
be involved with your lump and I 
was. 1 want it and you to be gone 
as soon as you’re both up to it. 
Have I made myself absolutely 
clear?” 

“Just let me get dressed,” she 
said tightly, “and I’ll leave right 
now.” 

“Without making a speech?” 

“Without making a speech.” 
And in a flash her anger turned to 
misery and she added: “I was go- 
ing to say I was grateful. Would 



that have been all right, sir!” 

And his anger underwent a 
change too, for he came close to 
the bed and sat down on his heel, 
bringing their faces to a level, and 
said quite gently, “That would be 
fine. Although — you won’t really 
be grateful for another ten days, 
when you get your ‘spontaneous 
remission’ reports — or maybe for 
six months or a year or two or five, 
when examinations keep on test- 
ing out negative.” 

She detected such a wealth of 
sadness behind this that she found 
herself reaching for the hand with 
which he steadied himself against 
the edge of the bed. He did not re- 
coil but he didn’t seem to welcome 
her touch either. 

“Why can’t I be grateful right 
now?” 

“That would be an act of faith,” 
he said bitterly, “and that just 
doesn’t happen any more — if it 
ever did.” He rose and went to- 
ward the door. “Please don’t go 
tonight,” he said. “It’s dark and 
you don’t know the way. I’ll see 
you in the morning.” 

When he came back in the morn- 
ing the door was open. The bed 
was made and the sheets were 
folded neatly on the chair, togeth- 
er with the pillow slips and the tow- 
els she had used. She wasn’t there. 

H e came out into the entrance 
court and contemplated his 
bonsai. 

Early sun gold-frosted the hori- 



48 



GALAXY 




zontal upper foliage of the old tree 
and brought its gnarled limbs in- 
to sharp relief, tough brown-gray 
creviced in velvet. Only the com- 
panion of a bonsai (there are own- 
ers of bonsai but they are a lesser 
breed) fully understands the rela- 
tionship. There is an exclusive and 
individual treeness to the tree be- 
cause it is a living thing and living 
things change — and there are def- 
inite ways in which the tree desires 
to change. A man sees the tree and 
in his mind makes certain exten- 
sions and extrapolations of what 
he sees and sets about making 
them happen. The tree in turn will 
do only what a tree can do, will 
resist to the death any attempt to 
do what it cannot do or to do it in 
less time than it needs. The shap- 
ing of a bonsai is therefore al- 
ways a compromise and always a 
cooperation. A man cannot create 
bonsai, nor can a tree. It- takes 
both and they must understand 
one another. It takes a long time 
to do that. One memorizes one’s 
bonsai, every twig, the angle of 
every crevice and needle and, ly- 
ing awake at night or in a pause 
a thousand miles away, one re- 
calls this or that line or mass, one 
makes one’s plans. With wire and 
water and light, with tilting and 
with the planting of water-robbing 
weeds or heavy, root-shading 
ground cover, one explains to the 
tree what one wants. And if the 
explanation is well enough made 
and there is great enough under- 



standing the tree will respond and 
obey — almost. 

Always there will be its own self- 
respecting, highly individual vari- 
ation: Very well. I shall do what 
you want, but I will do it my way. 
And for these variations the tree 
is always willing to present a clear 
and logical explanation and, more 
often than not (almost smiling), it 
will make clear to the man that he 
could have avoided it if his under- 
standing had been better. 

It is the slowest sculpture in the 
world, and there is, at times, 
doubt as to which is being sculp- 
ted, man or tree. 

So he stood for perhaps ten min- 
utes, watching the flow of gold 
over the upper branches, and then 
went to a carved wooden chest, 
opened it, shook out a length of 
disreputable cotton duck. He 
opened the hinged glass at one 
side of the atrium and spread the 
canvas over the roots and all the 
earth to one side of the trunk, leav- 
ing the rest open to wind and wat- 
er. Perhaps in a while — a month 
or two — a certain shoot in the top- 
most branch would take the hint 
and the uneven flow of moisture 
up through the cambium layer 
would nudge it away from that up- 
ward reach and persuade it to con- 
tinue the horizontal passage. And 
perhaps not — and it would need 
the harsher language of binding 
and wire. But then it might have 
something to say, too, about the 
rightness of an upward trend and 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



49 




would perhaps say it persuasively 
enough to convince the man — al- 
together, a patient, meaningful, 
and rewarding dialogue. 

“Good morning.” 

“Oh, goddam!” he barked. “You 
made me bite my tongue. I 
thought you’d gone.” 

“I had.” She kneeled in the 
shadows, her back against the in- 
ner wall, facing the atrium. “But 
then I stopped to be with the tree 
for a while.” 

“Then what?” 

“1 thought a lot.” 

“What about?” 

“You.” 

“Did you now?” 

“Look,” she said firmly. “I’m 
not going to any doctor to get this 
thing checked out. 1 didn’t want to 
leave until I had told you that and 
until I was sure you believed me.” 
“Come on in and we’ll get some- 
thing to eat.” 

Foolishly, she giggled. 

“I can’t. My feet are asleep.” 
Without hesitation he scooped 
her up in his arms and carried her 
around the atrium. 

She asked, her arm around his 
shoulders and their faces close, 
“Do you believe me?” 

He continued around until they 
reached the wooden chest, then 
stopped and looked into her eyes. 

“I believe you. I don’t know 
why you decided as you did but 
I’m willing to believe you.” 

He set her down on the chest 
and stood back. 



“It’s that act of faith you men- 
tioned,” she said gravely. “I 
thought you ought to have it at 
least once in your life — so you can 
never say again what you said.” 
She tapped her heels gingerly 
against the slate floor. “Owl” She 
made a pained smile. “Pins and 
needles.” 

“You must have been thinking 
for a long time.” 

“Y es. Want more?” 

“Sure.” 

“You are an angry, frightened 
man.” 

He seemed delighted. 

“Tell me about all that!” 

“No,” she said quietly. “You 
tell me. I’m very serious about 
this. Why are you angry? 

“I’m not.” 

“Why are you so angry?” 

“I tell you I’m not. Although,” 
he added good-naturedly, “you’re 
pushing me in that direction.” 
“Weli then, why?” 

H e gazed at her for what to 
her seemed a very long time in- 
deed. 

“You really want to know, don’t 
you?” 

She nodded. 

He waved a sudden hand, up 
and out. 

“Where do you suppose all this 
came from — the house, the land, 
the equipment?” 

She waited. 

“An exhaust system,” he said, 
with a thickening of his voice she 



50 



GALAXY 




was coming to know. “A way of 
guiding exhaust gases out of in- 
ternal combustion engines in such 
a way that they are given a spin. 
Unburned solids are embedded in 
the walls of the muffler in a glass- 
wool liner that slips out in one 
piece and can be replaced by a 
clean one every couple of thousand 
miles. The rest of the exhaust is 
fired by its own spark plug and 
what will burn, burns. The heat is 
used to preheat the fuel. The rest 
is spun again through a five-thou- 
sand mile cartridge. What finally 
gets out is, by today’s standards at 
least, pretty clean. And because of 
the preheating it actually gets bet- 
ter mileage out of the engine.” 

“So you’ve made a lot of 
money.” 

“I made a lot of money,” he 
echoed. “But not because the 
thing is being used to cut down air 
pollution. I got the money because 
an automobile company bought it 
and buried it in a vault. They 
don’t like it because it costs some- 
thing to install in new cars. Some 
friends of theirs in the refining 
business don’t like it because it 
gets high performance out of crude 
fuels. Well, all right — 1 didn’t 
know any better and 1 won’t make 
the same mistake again. But yes — 
I’m angry. I was angry when I was 
a kid on a tankship and we were 
set to washing down a bulkhead 
with chipped brown soap and can- 
vas. I went ashore and bought a 
detergent and tried it and it was 



better, faster and cheaper, so 1 
took it to the bos’n, who gave me 
a punch in the mouth for pretend- 
ing to know his job better than he 
did. Well, he was drunk at the 
time but the rough part came 
when the old shellbacks in the 
crew ganged up on me for being 
what they called a ‘company man’ 
— that’s -a dirty name in a ship. I 
just couldn’t understand why peo- 
ple got in the way of something 
better. 

“I’ve been up against that all 
my life. I have something in my 
head that just won’t quit. It’s a 
way I have of asking the next 
question: why is so-and-so the way 
it is? Why can’t it be such-and- 
such instead? There is always an- 
other question to be asked about 
anything or any situation — espe- 
cially you shouldn’t quit when you 
like an answer because there’s 
always another one after it. And 
we live in a world where people 
just don’t want to ask the next 
question! 

“I’ve been paid all my stomach 
will take for things people won’t 
use and if I’m mad all the time it’s 
really my fault — I admit it — be- 
cause I just can’t stop asking that 
next question and coming up with 
answers. There are a half-dozen 
real block-busters in that lab that 
nobody will ever see and half a 
hundred more in my head. But 
what can you do in a world where 
people would rather kill each other 
in a desert, even when they’re 



SLOW SCULPTURE 



51 




shown it can turn green and bloom 
— where they’ll fall all over them- 
selves to pour billions into devel- 
oping a new oil strike when it’s 
been proved over and over again 
that the fossil fuels will kill us all? 
“Yes, I’m angry. Shouldn’t I be?” 

She let the echoes of his voice 
swirl around the court and out 
through the hole in the top of the 
atrium and waited a little longer to 
let him know he was here with her 
and not beside himself and his fury. 
He grinned at her sheepishly when 
he came to this. 

And she said, “Maybe you’re 
asking the next question instead of 
asking the right question. I think 
people who live by wise old sayings 
are trying not to think — but I 
know one worth paying some at- 
tention to. It’s this: If you ask a 
question the right way, you’ve 
just given the answer.” She paused 
to see if he was paying real atten- 
tion. He was. She went on, “I 
mean, if you put your hand on a 
hot stove you might ask yourself, 
how can I stop my hand from 
burning? And the answer is pretty 
clear, isn’t it? If the world keeps 
rejecting what you have to give — 
there’s some way of asking why 
that contains the answer.” 

“It’s a simple answer,” he said 
shortly. “People are stupid.” 

“That isn’t the answer and you 
know it,” she said. 

“What is?” 

“Oh, 1 can’t tell you that! All I 
know is that the way you do some- 



thing, where people are concerned, 
is more important than what you 
do. If you want results. I mean — 
you already know how to get what 
you want with the tree, don’t you?” 
“I’ll be damned.” 

“People are living, growing 
things, too. I don’t know a hun- 
dredth part of what you do about 
bonsai but I do know this — when 
you start one, it isn’t often the 
strong straight healthy ones you 
take. It’s the twisted sick ones 
that can be made the most beauti- 
ful. When you get to shaping hu- 
manity, you might remember 
that.” 

“Of all the — I don’t know 
whether to laugh in your face or 
punch you right in the mouth!” 

She rose. He hadn’t realized she 
was quite this tall. 

“I’d better go.” 

“Come on now. You know a 
figure of speech when you hear 
one.” 

“Oh, I didn’t feel threatened. 
But — I’d better go, all the same.” 
Shrewdly he asked her, “Are 
you afraid to ask the next ques- 
tion?” 

“Terrified.” 

“Ask it anyway.” 

“No.” 

“Then I’ll do it for you. You 
said I was angry — and afraid. You 
want to know what I’m afraid of.” 
“Yes.” 

“You. I am scared to death of 
you.” 

“Are you really?” 



52 



GALAXY 




“You have a way of provoking 
honesty,” he said with some diffi- 
culty. “I’ll say what I know' you’re 
thinking: I’m afraid of any close 
human relationship. I’m afraid of 
something I can’t take apart with 
a screwdriver or a mass spectro- 
scope or a table of cosines and 
tangents. I don’t know how to 
handle it.” 

His voice was jocular but his 
hands were shaking. 

“You do it by watering one 
side,” she said softly, “or by turn- 
ing it just so in the sun. You han- 



dle it as if it were a living thing, 
like a species or a woman or a 
bonsai. It will be what you want it 
to be if you let it be itself and take 
the time and the care.” 

“I think,” he said, “that you are 
making me some kind of offer. 
Why?” 

“Sitting there most of the 
night,” she said, “I had a crazy 
kind of image. Do you think two 
sick twisted trees ever made bonsai 
out of one another?” 

“What’s your name?” he asked 
her. ^ 



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SLOW SCULPTURE 



53 






A. BERTRAM CHANDLER 



BEAUTY 



She was young and beautiful 
and demanding— demanding a 
love Grimes could never give! 



C OMMODORE DAMIEN, Of- 
ficer Commanding Couriers, 
was not in a very good mood. This 
was not unusual — especially on 
the occasions when Lieutenant 
Grimes, captain of the Serpent 
Class Courier Adder, happened to 
be on the carpet. 

“Mr. Grimes — ” said the com- 
modore in a tired voice. 

“Sir.” 

“Mr. Grirhes, you’ve been and 
gone and done it again.” 

The lieutenant’s prominent ears 
reddened. 

“1 did what I could to save my 
ship and my people, sir.” 

“You destroyed an expensive 
piece of equipment and played 
merry hell with the Federation’s 
colonial policy. My masters — who, 
incidentally, are also your masters 
— are not, repeat not, amused.” 

“I saved my ship,” Grimes re- 
iterated stubbornly. 




55 




The commodore looked down 
at the report on his desk. A grim 
smile did little, if anything, to 
soften the harsh planes of his bony 
face. 

“It says here that your ship 
saved you.” 

“She did,” admitted Grimes. “It 
was a sort of mutual — ” 

“And it was your ship that killed 
— I suppose that ‘kill’ is the right 
word to use regarding a highly in- 
telligent robot — Mr. Adam. H’m, 
a slightly extenuating circum- 
stance. Nonetheless, Grimes, were 
it not for the fact that you’re a 
better than average spaceman 
you’d be O-U-bloody-T, trying to 
get a job as third mate in Rim 
Runners or some such outfit.” He 
made a steeple of his skeletal fin- 
gers, glared coldly at the lieuten- 
ant over the bony erection. “So, in 
the interests of all concerned. I’ve 
decided that your Adder will not 
be carrying any more passengers 
for a while — at least, not with you 
in command of her. Even so. I’m 
afraid that you’ll not have much 
time to enjoy the social life — such 
as it is — of base.” 

Grimes sighed audibly. Al- 
though a certain Dr. Margaret 
Lazenby was his senior in rank he 
was beginning to get on well with 
her. 

“As soon as repairs and routine 
maintenance are completed, Mr. 
Grimes, you will get the hell off 
this planet.” 

“What about my officers, sir? 



Mr. Beadle is overdue for leave.” 
“My heart fair bleeds for him.” 
“And Mr. McCloud is in the 
hospital.” 

“Ensign Vitelli, your new engi- 
neering officer, was ordered to re- 
port to your vessel as soon as pos- 
sible, if not before. The work of 
fitting a replacement computer to 
Adder is already well in hand.” 
The commodore looked at his 
watch. “It is now fourteen-thirty- 
five. At eighteen hundred hours 
you will lift ship.” 

“My orders, sir — ” 

“Oh, yes. Grimes. Your orders. 
A matter of minor importance, ac- 
tually. As long as you get out of 
my hair that’s all that matters to 
me. But I suppose I have to put 
you in the picture. The Shaara are 
passing through a phase of being 
nice to humans and we of the Fed- 
eration are reciprocating. There’s 
a small parcel of extremely impor- 
tant cargo to be lifted from Droo- 
moor to Brooum and for some rea- 
son or other our arthropodal allies 
haven’t a fast ship of their own 
handy. Lindisfarne Base is only a 
week from Droomoor by Serpent 
Class Courier. So — ” 

So Viper, Asp and Cobra have 
all been in port for weeks hut / get 
the job . . . 

Grimes did not utter the 
thought but the commodore had 
his telepathic moments. He smiled 
again, this time with a touch of 
sympathy. 

He said, “I want you off Lind- 



56 



GALAXY 




isfarne, young Mr. Grimes, before 
there’s too much of a stink raised 
over this Mr. Adam affair. You’re 
too honest. I can bend the truth 
better than you can.” 

“Thank you, sir,” said Grimes, 
meaning it. 

“Off you go, now. Don’t forget 
these.” Grimes took the heavily 
sealed envelope. “And try not to 
make too much of a balls of this 
assignment.” 

“I’ll try, sir.” 

Grimes saluted, marched smart- 
ly out of the commodore’s office, 
strode across the apron to where 
his flying darning needle, not yet 
shifted to a lay-up berth, was 
awaiting him. 

lyf R. BEADLE met him at the 
^"airlock. He rarely smiled — 
but he did so rather smugly when 
he saw the orders in Grimes’ 
hand. 

He asked casually, “Any word of 
my relief. Captain?” 

“Yes. You’re not getting it. 
Number One,” Grimes told him, 
rather hating himself for the plea- 
sure he derived from being the 
bearer of bad tidings. “And we’re 
to lift off at eighteen hundred 
hours. Is the new engineer aboard 
yet?” 

Beadle’s face had resumed its 
normal lugubrious cast. 

“Yes,” he said. “But stores. Cap- 
tain — repairs — maintenance — ” 
“Are they in hand?” 

“Yes, but — ” 



“Then if we aren’t ready for 
space it will be our own fault.” 

But Grimes knew — and it made 
him feel as unhappy as his first 
lieutenant looked — that the ship 
would be ready. 

A dder lifted precisely on 
time. Grimes, sulking hard — he 
had not been able to see Maggie 
Lazenby — did not resort to his 
customary spectacular getting-up- 
stairs-in-a-hurry technique, kept 
his fingers off the auxiliary reac- 
tion drive controls. The ship 
drifted up and out under inertial 
drive only, seemingly sharing the 
reluctance to depart of her of- 
ficers. Beadle slumped gloomily in 
his chair; von Tannenbaum, the 
navigator, stared at his instruments 
with an elaborate lack of interest, 
Slovotny, the electronic commu- 
nications officer, snarled every 
time that he had occasion to hold 
converse with Aerospace Control. 

And yet, once the vessel was 
clear of the atmosphere. Grimes 
began to feel almost happy. 

Growl you may but go you 
must. . . 

He was on his way. He was back 
in what he regarded as his natural 
element. Quite cheerfully he 
went through the motions of lining 
Adder up on the target star, was 
pleased to note that von Tannen- 
baum was cooperating in his usual 
highly efficient manner. And 
then, trajectory set, the Mann- 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



57 




chenn Drive was put into opera- 
tion and the little ship was falling 
at a fantastic speed through the 
warped continuum, with yet an- 
other mission to be accomplished. 

The captain made the usual mi- 
nor ritual of lighting his pipe. 

He said, “Normal deep space 
routine. Number One.” 

“Normal deep space routine, 
sir.” 

“Who has the watch?” 

“Mr. von Tannenbaum, Cap- 
tain.” 

“Good. Then come to see me as 
soon as you’re free.” 

When Beadle knocked at his 
door Grimes had the envelope of 
instructions open. He motioned 
the first lieutenant to a chair. 

“Fix us drinks. Number One, 
while I see what’s in this — ” He 
extended a hand for the glass the 
officer put into it, sipped pink gin, 
continued reading. “Well, we’re 
bound for Droomoor, as you 
know.” 

“As well I know.” Beadle then 
muttered something about com- 
munistic bumblebees. 

“Come, come, Mr. Beadle. The 
Shaara are our brave allies. And 
they aren’t at all bad when you 
get to know them.” 

“I don’t want to get to know 
them. If I couldn’t have my leave 
at least I could have been sent to 
a world with real human girls and 
a few bright lights — ” 

“Mr. Beadle, you shock me. By 
your xenophobia as well as by your 



low tastes. However, as I was say- 
ing, we are to proceed to Droo- 
moor at maximum velocity con- 
sistent with safety. There we are 
to pick up a small parcel of very 
important cargo, the loading of 
which is to be strictly supervised 
by the local authorities. As soon as 
possible thereafter we are to pro- 
ceed to Brooum at maximum ve- 
locity.” 

“Just delivery boys,” grumbled 
Beadle. “That’s us.” 

“Oh, well,” Grimes told him 
philosophically, “it’s a change 
from being coach drivers. And af- 
ter the trouble we’ve had with pas- 
sengers of late it should be a wel- 
come one.” 

D roomoor is an Earth-type 
planet featuring the usual seas, 
continents, polar icecaps and all 
the rest of it. Evolution did not 
produce any life forms deviating to 
any marked degree from the stan- 
dard pattern — neither did it come 
up with any fire-making, tool-us- 
ing animals. If human beings had 
been the first to discover it, it 
would have become a Terran colo- 
ny. But a Shaara ship had made 
the first landing, so it was colo- 
nized by the Shaara, as was 
Brooum, a very similar world. 

Grimes brought Adder in to 
Port Sherr with his usual compe- 
tence, receiving the usual coopera- 
tion from the Shaara version of 
Aerospace Control. Other matters 
were not so usual. He and his of- 



58 



GALAXY 




ficers were interested to note 
that the aerial traffic they sighted 
during their passage through the 
atmosphere consisted of semi-rigid 
airships rather than heavier-than- 
air machines. And the buildings 
surrounding the landing apron at 
the spaceport were featureless, 
mud-colored domes rather than 
angular constructions of glass and 
metal. Beadle mumbled some- 
thing about a huddle of bloody 
beehives but Grimes paid no atten- 
tion. As a reasonably efficient cap- 
tain he was interested in the lay- 
out of the port, was trying to form 
some idea of what facilities were 
available. A ship is a ship is a 
ship, no matter by whom built or 
by whom manned — but a mammal 
is a mammal, an arthropod is an 
arthropod. And each has its own 
separate requirements. 

“The port officials seem on their 
way out to us,” remarked von 
Tannenbaum. 

A party of Shaara had emerged 
from a circular opening near the 
top of the closer dome. They flew 
slowly toward the ship, their gauzy 
wings almost invisible in the sun- 
light. Grimes focused his binocu- 
lars on them. In the lead was a 
princess, larger than the others, 
her body more slender, glittering 
with the jeweled insignia of her 
rank. She was followed by two 
drones, so hung about with pre- 
cious stones and metal that it was 
a wonder that they were able to 
stay airborne. Four workers, less 



gaudily caparisoned than the 
drones but with sufficient orna- 
mentation to differentiate them 
from the common herd, completed 
the party. 

“Number One,” said Grimes, 
“attend the airlock, please. I shall 
receive the boarding party in my 
day cabin.” 

He went down from the control 
room to his quarters, got out the 
whisky. Three bottles, he decided, 
should be sufficient, although the 
Shaara drones were notorious for 
their capacity. 

T he princess was hard, busi- 
nesslike. She refused to take a 
drink herself and under her glit- 
tering, many-faceted eyes the 
workers dared not accept Grimes’ 
hospitality. Even the drones 
limited themselves to a single small 
glass apiece. She stood there like 
a gleaming, metallic piece of ab- 
stract statuary, motionless, and 
the voice that issued from the box 
strapped to her thorax was that of 
a machine rather than of a living 
being. 

She said, “This is an important 
mission. Captain. You will come 
with me at once to the Queen 
Mother for instructions.” 

Grimes did not like being or- 
dered around, especially aboard 
his own ship. But he was well 
aware that it is foolish to antago- 
nize planetary rulers. 

“Certainly, Your Highness. But 
first I must give instructions to 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



59 




my officers. And before I can do 
so I must have some information. 
To begin with, how long a stay do 
we have on your world?” 

“You will lift ship as soon as the 
consignment has been loaded.” 
She consulted the jeweled watch 
she wore strapped to a forelimb. 
“The underworkers will be on 
their way out to your vessel now.” 
She pointed toward the four up- 
per caste working Shaara. “These 
will supervise stowage. Please in- 
form your officers of the arrange- 
ments.” 

Grimes called Beadle on the in- 
tercom, asked him to the cabin, 
told him to place himself at the 
disposal of the supervisors and to 
ensure that Adder was in readi- 
ness for instant departure. He 
then went to his bedroom to 
change into a dress uniform, was 
pulling off his shirt when he re- 
alized that the princess had fol- 
lowed him. 

“What are you doing?” she 
asked coldly. 

“Putting on something more 
suitable. Your Highness.” 

“That will not be necessary. 
Captain. You will be the only hu- 
man in the presence of Her Maj- 
esty and everybody will know who 
and what you are.” 

Resignedly Grimes shrugged 
back into his uniform shirt, un- 
adorned save for the shoulder 
boards. He felt that he should be 
allowed to make more of a show- 
ing, especially among beings all 



dressed up like Christmas trees — 
but his orders had been to cooper- 
ate fully with the Shaara author- 
ities. And shorts and shirt were far 
more comfortable than long trou- 
sers, frock coat, collar and tie, 
fore-and-aft hat and that ridicu- 
lous ceremonial sword. 

He hung his personal communi- 
cator over his shoulder, put on his 
cap and said, “I’m ready. Your 
Highness.” 

“What is that?” she asked sus- 
piciously. “A weapon?” 

“No, Your Highness. A radio 
transceiver. I must remain in touch 
with my ship at all times.” 

“1 suppose it’s all right,” she 
said grudgingly. 

II 

W HEN Grimes walked down 
the ramp, following the prin- 
cess and her escorting drones, he 
saw that a wheeled truck had 
drawn up alongside Adder and 
that a winch mounted on the vehi- 
cle was reeling in a small airship, a 
bloated gasbag from which was 
slung a flimsy car, at the after end 
of which a huge, two-bladed pro- 
peller was still lazily turning. 
Workers were scurrying about on 
the ground and buzzing between 
the blimp and the truck. 

“Your cargo,” said the princess. 
“And your transport from the 
spaceport to the palace.” 

The car of the airship was now 
only a foot above the winch. From 
it the workers lifted carefully a 



60 



GALAXY 




white cylinder — apparently made 
of some plastic — about four feet 
long and one foot in diameter. Set 
into its smooth surface were dials 
and an indicator light that glowed 
vividly green even in the bright 
sunlight. An insulated lead ran 
from it to the airship’s engine com- 
partment where, thought Grimes, 
there must be either a battery or 
a generator. Yes, a battery it was. 
Two workers, their wings a shim- 
mering transparency, brought it 
out and set it down on the concrete 
beside the cylinder. 

“You will embark,” the princess 
stated. 

Grimes stood back and assessed 
the situation. It would be easy 
enough to get on to the truck, to 
clamber on top of the winch and 
from there into the car — but it 
would be impossible to do so with- 
out getting his white shorts, shirt 
and stockings filthy. Insofar as ma- 
chinery was concerned the Shaara 
believed in lubrication and plenty 
of it. 

“I am waiting,” said the prin- 
cess. 

“Yes, Your Highness, but — ” 

Grimes did not hear the order 
given — the Shaara communicated 
among themselves telepathically 
— so was somewhat taken aback 
when two of the workers ap- 
proached him, buzzing loudly. He 
flinched when their claws pene- 
trated the thin fabric of his cloth- 
ing and scratched his skin. He 
managed to refrain from crying 



out when he was lifted from the 
ground, carried the short distance 
to the airship and dumped, 
sprawling, on to the deck of the 
open car. The main hurt was to his 
dignity. Looking up at his own ves- 
sel he could see the grinning faces 
of von Tannenbaum and Slovotny 
at the control room viewports. 

He scrambled somehow to his 
feet, wondering if the fragile deck- 
ing would stand his weight. And 
then the princess was with him, 
as were the escorting drones, and 
the upper caste worker in com- 
mand of the blimp had taken her 
place at the simple controls. Next 
the frail contraption was balloon- 
ing swiftly upward. Grimes, look- 
ing down, saw the end of the an- 
chor cable whip off the winch bar- 
rel. He wondered what would hap- 
pen if the dangling wire fouled 
something on the ground below, 
then decided it was none of his 
business. These people had been 
playing around with airships for 
quite some years and must know 
what they were about. 

The princess was not in a com- 
municative mood and obviously 
the drones and the workers talked 
only when talked to — by her — al- 
though all of them wore voice 
boxes. Grimes was quite content 
with the way things were. He had 
decided that the Shaaran was a 
bossy female and he did not like 
bossy females, mammalian, arthro- 
podal or whatever. He settled 
down to enjoy the trip, appreciat- 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



61 




ing the leisurely — by his stan- 
dards — flight over the lush coun- 
tryside. There were the green, 
rolling hills, the great banks of 
flowering shrubs, huge splashes of 
color that were vivid without be- 
ing gaudy. Thousands of workers 
were busily employed about the 
enormous blossoms. He saw al- 
most no machinery. In a culture 
such as this there would be little 
need for machines, workers of the 
lower grades being no more than 
flesh-and-blood robots. 

Ahead loomed the city. 

Just a huddle of domes it was, 
some large, some small, with the 
greatest of all of them roughly in 
the center. This one. Grimes saw 
as they approached it, had a flat- 
tened top, and here he saw ma- 
chinery — a winch, he decided. 

The airship came in high, lost 
altitude slowly, finally hovering 
over the palace, its propeller bare- 
ly turning over to keep it stem- 
ming the light breeze. Two work- 
ers flew up from the platform, 
caught the end of the dangling 
cable, snapped it on to the end of 
another cable brought up from the 
winch drum. The winch was 
started and the blimp was drawn 
down. A set of wheeled steps was 
pushed into position, its upper 
part hooked on to the gunwale of 
the swaying car. The princess and 
her escort ignored this facility, 
fluttering out and down in a flurry 
of gauzy wings. Grimes used the 
ladder, of course, feeling grateful 



that somebody had bothered to re- 
member that he was wingless 
biped. 

“Follow me,” snapped the prin- 
cess. 

Grimes followed her through a 
circular hatch in the platform. The 
ramp down which she led him was 
steep and he had difficulty main- 
taining his balance, was unable to 
gain more than a confused impres- 
sion of the interior of the huge 
building. There was plenty of 
light, luckily, a green-blue radi- 
ance emanating from clusters of 
luminescent insects hanging at in- 
tervals from the roof of the corri- 
dor. The air was warm and bore 
an acrid but not unpleasant tang. 
It carried very few sounds, how- 
ever, only a continuous, faintly 
sinister rustling noise. Grimes 
missed the murmur of machinery. 
Surely — apart from anything else 
— a vast structure such as this 
would need mechanical ventila- 
tion. In any case, there was an ap- 
preciable air flow. And then, at 
a junction of four corridors, he saw 
a group of workers, their feet 
hooked into rings set in the 
smooth floor, their wings beating 
slowly, maintaining the circulation 
of the atmosphere. 

Down Grimes and the princess 
went, down through corridors 
that were deserted save for them- 
selves, through other corridors 
that were busy streets crowded 
with workers scurrying on myster- 
ious errands. But the lower caste 



62 



GALAXY 




Shaara always gave the princess 
and her party a respectfully wide 
berth. Only an occasional drone 
would stop to stare at the Earth- 
man with interest. 

The party came at last to the 
end of a long passageway, closed 
off by a grilled door, the first that 
Grimes had seen in the hive. On 
the far side of it were six workers, 
hung about with metal accoutre- 
ments. Workers? No, Grimes de- 
cided: soldiers, Amazons. Did they, 
he wondered, have stings, as did 
their Terran counterparts? Per- 
haps they did — but the laser pis- 
tols they held would be far more 
effective. 

“Who comes?” asked one of 
them in the sort of voice that 
Grimes associated with sergeant- 
majors. 

“The Princess Shrrla, with 
Drones Brrynn and Drryhr, and 
Earth-Drone-Captain Grrimes.” 

“Enter, Princess Shrrla. Enter, 
Earth-Drone-Captain Grrimes.” 

The grille slid silently aside, ad- 
mitting Grimes and the princess, 
shutting again, leaving the two 
drones on its further side. Two 
soldiers led the way along a tunnel 
that, by the Earthman’s stan- 
dards, was very poorly illuminated; 
two more brought up the rear. 
Grimes was pleased to note that 
the princess seemed to have lost 
most of her arrogance. 

I^HE tunnel led to a vast cham- 
^ ber, a blue-lit dimness about 



which the shapes of the Queen- 
Mother’s attendants rustled, scur- 
ried and crept. Slowly they 
walked over the smooth, soft floor 
— under Grimes’ shoes it felt un- 
pleasantly organic — to the raised 
platform on which lay a huge, pale 
shape. Ranged around the plat- 
form were screens upon which 
moved pictures of scenes from all 
over the planet — one showed the 
spaceport. Adder standing tall and 
slim and gleaming on the apron. 
Banks of dials and meters evidently 
controlled the screens. Throne- 
room this enormous vault was — 
and nursery and the control room 
of a world. 

Grimes looked with pity at the 
flabby, grossly distended body 
with its ineffectual limbs, its use- 
less stubs of wings. He did not, 
oddly .enough, consider obscene 
the slowly moving belt that ran 
under the platform, upon which, at 
regular intervals, a glistening, 
pearly egg was deposited, neither 
was he repelled by the spectacle 
of the worker whose swollen 
body visibly shrank as she regurgi- 
tated nutriment into the mouth of 
the Shaara Queen — but he was 
taken aback when that being spoke 
to him vyhile feeding was still in 
progress. He should not have 
been, knowing as he did that the 
artificial voice boxes worn by the 
Shaara have no connection with 
their organs of ingestion. 

“Welcome, Captain Grimes,” 
she said in deep, almost masculine 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



63 




tones. Her voice was truly regal. 

“i am honored, Your Majesty,” 
he stammered. 

“You do us a great service. Cap- 
tain Grimes.” 

“That is a pleasure as well as an 
honor. Your Majesty.” 

“So — but. Captain Grimes, I 
must, as you Earthmen say, put 
you in the picture.” A short silence 
ensued. “On Brooum exists crisis. 
Disease — a virus, a mutated virus 
has taken its toll among the hives. 
A cure was found too late. The 
Brooum Queen Mother is dead. 
All princesses not beyond fertiliza- 
tion age are dead. Even the royal 
eggs, larvae and pupae were de- 
stroyed by the disease. We, of 
course, are best able to afford help 
to our daughters and sisters on 
Brooum. We offered to send a fer- 
tilizable princess to become 
Queen Mother — but the Council 
of Princesses which now rules the 
colony insists that its new mon- 
arch be born, as it were, on the 
planet. We are dispatching — by 
your .vessel — a royal pupa. She 
will tear the silken sheath and 
emerge, as an imago, into the 
world over which she will reign.” 

Grimes grunted absentmind- 
edly, added hastily; “Your Maj- 
esty.” 

The Queen . Mother turned her 
attention to the television screens. 

“If we are not mistaken,” she 
said, “the loading of the refriger- 
ated canister containing the pupa 
has been completed. Princess 



Shrrla will take you back to your 
ship. You will lift and proceed as 
soon as is practicable.” Again she 
paused, then went on. “We need 
not tell you. Captain Grimes, that 
we Shaara have great respect for 
Terran spacemen. We are con- 
fident that you will carry out your 
mission successfully. We shall be 
pleased, on your return to our 
planet, to confer upon you the Or- 
der of the Golden Honeyflower. 
On your bicycle, spaceman!” 
Grimes looked at the recum- 
bent Queen dubiously. Where had 
she picked up that expression? But 
he had heard it said — and was in- 
clined to agree — that the Shaara 
were more human than many of 
the humanoids throughout the 
Galaxy. 

He bowed low — then, following 
the princess, escorted by the sol- 
diers, made his way out of the 
throne-room. 

I T IS just three weeks, Terran 
Standard, from Droomoor to 
Brooum as the Serpent- Class 
Courier flies. That, of course, is 
assuming that all systems are go 
aboard the said Courier. All sys- 
tems were not go insofar as Adder 
was concerned. This was the re- 
sult of an unfortunate combina- 
tion of circumstances. The ship 
had been fitted with a new com- 
puter at Lindisfarne Base. A new 
engineering officer — all of whose 
previous experience had been as a 
junior in a Constellation 



64 



GALAXY 




Class Cruiser — had been ap- 
pointed to her and she had not 
been allowed to stay in port long 
enough for any real maintenance 
to be carried out. 

The trouble started one evening, 
ship’s time, when Grimes was dis- 
cussing matters with Spooky 
Deane, the psionic communica- 
tions officer. The telepath was, as 
usual, getting outside a large, un- 
diluted gin. His captain was sip- 
ping a glass of the same fluid but 
with ice cubes and bitters as ad- 
ditives. 

“Well, Spooky,” said Grimes, “I 
don’t think that we shall have any 
trouble with this passenger. She 
stays in her cocoons — the home- 
grown one and the plastic outer 
casing — safe and snug and hard- 
frozen. Thawing her out will be 
up to her loyal subjects. By that 
time we shall be well on our 
way — ” 

“She’s alive, you know,” said 
Deane. 

“Of course she’s alive.” 

“She’s conscious, I mean. I’m 
getting more and more attuned to 
her thoughts, her feelings. It’s al- 
ways been said that it’s practically 
impossible for there to be any real 
contact of minds between human 
and Shaara telepaths — but when 
you’re cooped up in the same ship 
with a Shaara, a little ship at 
that — ” 

“Tell me more,” ordered 
Grimes. 

“It’s — fascinating. You know, of 



course, that race memory plays a 
big part in the Shaara culture. The 
princess, when she emerges as an 
imago, will know exactly what her 
duties are and what the duties of 
those about her are. She knows 
that her two main functions will 
be to rule and to breed. Workers 
exist only to serve her and every 
drone is a potential father to her 
people.” 

“And is she aware of usT' 

“Dimly, Captain. She doesn’t 
know, of course, who or what we 
are. As far as she’s concerned we’re 
just some of her subjects in close 
attendance upon her.” 

“Drones or workers?” 

Spooky Deane laughed. 

“If she were more fully con- 
scious she’d be rather confused on 
that point. Males are drones — and 
drones don’t work.” 

Grimes was about to make some 
unkind remarks about his officers 
when the lights flickered. When 
they flickered a second time he 
was already on his feet. When they 
went out he was halfway through 
the door of his day cabin and hur- 
rying toward the control room. 
The police lights came on, fed 
from the emergency batteries — 
but the sudden cessation of the 
noise of pumps and fans and the 
cutting off in mid-beat of the ir- 
regular throbbing of the inertial 
drive were frightening. The thin, 
high whine of the Mannschenn 
Drive Unit deepened as the spin- 
ning, precessing gyroscopes slowed 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



65 




to a halt and, as they did so, there 
came the nauseating dizziness of 
temporal disorientation. 

Grimes kept going, although — 
as he put it later — he did not know 
if it was Christmas Day or last 
Thursday. The ship was in free 
fall now. He pulled himself rap- 
idly along the guide rail, was prac- 
tically swimming in air as he dived 
through the hatch into Control. 

Von Tannenbaum had the 
watch. He was busy at the auxil- 
iary machinery control panel. A 
fan restarted somewhere but a 
warning buzzer began to sound. 
The navigator cursed. The fan 
motor slowed down and the buz- 
zer ceased. 

“What’s happened. Pilot?” de- 
manded Grimes. 

“The Phoenix Jennie I think. 
Captain. Vitelli hasn’t reported 
yet — ” 

Then the engineer’s shrill, ex- 
cited voice sounded from the in- 
tercom speaker; “Auxiliary en- 
gineroom to Control. I have to 
report a leakage of deuterium.” 

“What pressure is left in the 
tank?” Grimes asked. 

“The gauges still show twenty 
thousand units. But — ” 

“But what?” Grimes snapped. 

“Captain — the tank is empty.” 

Grimes pulled himself to his 
chair, strapped himself in. He 
looked out through the viewports 
at the star-gemmed blackness, 
each point of light hard and sharp, 
no longer distorted by the tempo- 



ral precession fields of the Drive, 
each a distant sun lifetimes away. 
He turned to face his officers — 
Beadle, looking no more glum than 
usual; von Tannenbaum, whose 
normally ruddy face was now as 
pale as his hair; Slovotny, whose 
dark complexion now had a green- 
ish cast; Deane, ectoplasmic as 
always. They were joined by 
Vitelli, an ordinary-looking young 
man who was, at the moment, 
more than ordinarily frightened. 

“Mr. Vitelli,” Grimes asked, “is 
the leakage into our atmosphere or 
outside the hull?” 

“Outside, sir.” 

“Good. In that case — ” Grimes 
made a major production of filling 
and lighting his battered pipe. 
“Now I can think. Luckily I’ve not 
used any reaction mass this trip, so 
we have ample fuel for the emer- 
gency generator. Got your slipstick 
ready. Pilot? Assuming that the 
tanks are full, do we have enough 
to run the inertial and interstellar 
drives from here to Brooum?” 

“I’ll have to use the computer. 
Captain.” 

“Then use it. Meanwhile — 
Sparks and Spooky, can either of 
you gentlemen tell me what ships 
are in the vicinity?” 

“The Dog Star Line’s Basset," 
Slovotny told him. 

“The cruiser Draconis" added 
Deane. 

Grimes felt it would be humil- 
iating for a Courier Service Cap- 
tain to have to call for help — but 



66 



GALAXY 




Draconis would be the lesser of 
two evils. 

He said, “Get in touch with both 
vessels, Mr. Deane. I’m not sure 
that we can spare power for the 
Carlotti, Mr. Slovotny. Get in 
touch with both vessels, ask their 
positions and tell them ours. But 
don’t tell them anything else.” 
“Our position, sir, is — what?” 
Grimes swiveled so that he 
could see the chart tank. 

He rattled off the coordinates, 
adding: “Near enough, until we 
get an accurate fix.”" 

“I can take one now. Captain,” 
von Tannenbaum told him. 

“Thank you. Pilot. Finished 
your sums?” 

“Yes.” The navigator’s beefy 
face was expressionless. “To begin 
with, we have enough chemical 
fuel to maintain all essential ser- 
vices for a period of seventy-three 
Standard days. But we do not have 
enough fuel to carry us to Brooum, 
even using Mannschenn Drive 
only. We could, however, make 
fbr ZX1797 — Sol-type, with one 
Earth-type planet, habitable but 
currently uninhabited by intelli- 
gent life forms.” 

Grimes considered the situation. 
It he were going to call for help he 
would be better off staying where 
he was, in reasonable comfort and, 
for a while, safety. 

“Mr. Vitelli,” he said, “you can 
start up the emergency generator. 
Mr. Deane, as soon as Mr. von 
Tannenbaum has a fix you can get 



a message out to Basset and 
Draconis . . .” 

“But she’s properly awake,” 
Deane muttered. “She’s torn open 
the silk cocoon and the outer can- 
ister is opening — ” 

“What the hell are you talking 
about?” barked Grimes. 

“The princess. When the power 
went off the refrigeration unit 
stopped. She — ” The telepath’s 
face assumed an expression of rapt 
devotion. “We must go to her — ” 
“We must go to her,” echoed 
Vitelli. 

“The emergency generator,” 
Grimes almost yelled. But he, too, 
could feel that command inside 
his brain, the imperious demand 
for attention — for love. Here at 
last was something, someone he 
could serve with all the devotion of 
which he was — of which he ever 
would be capable. And yet a last, 
tattered shred of sanity persisted. 

He said gently, “We must start 
the emergency generator. She 
must not be cold or hungry.” 

Beadle agreed. “We must start 
it — for her.” 

They started the emergency 
generator and the ship came back 
to life — of a sort. She was a small 
bubble of light and warmth and 
life drifting down and through the 
black immensities. 

HI 

rilHE worst part of it all. Grimes 
said later, was knowing what 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



67 




was happening but not having the 
will power to do anything about 
it. Not being able to fight for, or 
even want, a different fate. 

“But it was educational. You 
can’t deny that. I always used to 
wonder how the Establishment 
gets away with so much. Now 1 
know. If you’re a member of the 
Establishment you have that in- 
born — arrogance? No, not arro- 
gance. That’s not the right word. 
You have the calm certainty that 
everybody will do just what you 
want. With our Establishment it 
could be largely the result of train- 
ing, of education. With the Shaara 
Establishment no education or 
training is necessary. Too, the 
princess had it easy — almost as 
easy as she would have had if she 
had broken out of her cocoon in 
the proper place at the proper 
time. She was in a little ship 
manned by junior officers, people 
used to saluting and obeying offi- 
cers with more gold braid on their 
sleeves. For her to impose her 
will was child’s play. Literally 
child’s play in this case. There was 
a communication problem, of 
course, but it wasn’t a serious one. 
Even if she couldn’t actually speak 
telepathically to the rest of us — 
there was Spooky Deane. With 
him she could dot the /’s and cross 
the t’s. And she did.” 

Adder’s officers gathered in the 
cargo compartment that was now 
the throne-room. A table had been 
set up, covered with a cloth that 



was, in actuality, a new Federation 
ensign from the ship’s flag locker. 
To it the princess — the queen, 
rather — clung with her four pos- 
terior legs. She was a beautiful 
creature, slim, the colors of her 
body undimmed by age. She was 
a glittering, bejeweled piece of 
abstract statuary but she was alive. 
With her great faceted eyes she 
regarded the men who hovered 
about her. She was demanding 
something. Grimes knew, as all of 
them did. She was demanding 
something — quietly at first, then 
more and more insistently. 

But what? 

Veneration? Worship? 

“She hungers,” stated Deane. 

She hungers . . . 

Grimes’s memory was still func- 
tioning. He tried to recall what he 
knew of the Shaara. 

He said, “Tell her that her 
needs will be satisfied.” 

Reluctantly, yet willingly, he 
left the cargo compartment, mak- 
ing his way to the galley. It did 
not take him long to find what he 
wanted, a squeeze bottle of syrup. 
He hurried back with it. 

It did not occur to him to hand 
the container to the queen. With 
his feet in contact with the deck 
he was able to stand before her, 
holding the bottle in his two 
hands, squeezing out the viscous 
fluid, drop by drop, into the wait- 
mouth. 

Normally he would have found 
that complexity of moving parts 



68 



GALAXY 




rather frightening, repulsive even 
— now they seemed to possess an 
essential rightness that was alto- 
gether lacking from the clumsy 
masticatory apparatus of a human 
being. Slowly, carefully he 
squeezed, until a voice spoke in his 
mind. 

Enough, enough . . . 

“She would rest now,” said 
Deane. 

“She shall rest,” stated Grimes. 

He led the way from the cargo 
compartment to the little ward- 
room. 

I N A bigger ship with a larger 
crew — with a senior officer in 
command who, by virtue of his 
rank, was himself a member of the 
Establishment — the spell might 
soon have been broken. But this 
was only a little vessel, and of her 
personnel only Grimes was poten- 
tially a rebel. The time would 
come when this potentiality would 
be realized — just as, later, the 
time of compromise would come 
— but it was not yet. He had been 
trained to obedience. 

In the wardroom the officers 
disposed of a meal of sorts. When 
it was over Grimes, from force of 
habit, pulled his pipe from his 
pocket, began to fill it. 

Deane admonished him, saying, 
“She wouldn’t like it. It taints 
the air.” 

“Of course,” agreed Grimes, 
putting his pipe away. 

They sat in uneasy, guilty si- 



lence. They should have been 
working. There was so much to be 
done about the Hive. Von Tan- 
nenbaum at last unbuckled him- 
self from his chair and, finding a 
soft rag, began unnecessarily to 
polish a bulkhead. Vitelli muttered 
something about cleaning up the 
engineroom and drifted away. 
Slovotny, saying that he wanted to 
help, followed Vitelli. Beadle took 
the dirty plates into the pantry — 
normally he washed the dishes just 
before the next meal. 

“She is hungry,” announced 
Deane. 

Grimes went to the galley for 
another bottle of syrup. 

So it went on day after day, 
with the Queen gaining strength 
and, if it were possible, even 
greater authority over her sub- 
jects. And she was learning. 
Deane’s mind was open to her 
and it was through Deane that she 
could speak. 

“She knows,” said the telepath, 
“that supplies in the Hive are 
limited, that sooner or later, 
sooner rather than later, we shall 
be without heat, without air or 
food. She knows that there is a 
planet within reach. She orders us 
to proceed there, so that a greater 
Hive may be established on its 
surface.” 

“Then let us proceed,” agreed 
Grimes. 

He knew, as they all knew, that 
a general distress call would bring 
help — but somehow he was in- 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



69 




capable of ordering it made. He 
knew that the establishment of a 
Hive on a planet of ZX1797 
would be utterly impossible — but 
that was what she wanted. 

So Adder awoke from her sleep- 
ing state, vibrating to the irregular 
rhythm of the inertial drive and, 
had there been an outside observ- 
er, flickered into invisibility as 
the gyroscopes of the Mannschenn 
Drive unit precessed and tumbled, 
falling down and through the 
warped continuum, pulling the 
structure of the ship with them. 

Ahead was ZX1797, a writhing, 
multi-hued spiral, expanding with 
every passing hour. 

Von Tannenbaum now held 
effective command of the ship. 
Grimes had become the Queen’s 
personal attendant, although it 
was still Deane who made her de- 
tailed wishes known. Grimes fed 
her, cleansed her, sat with her 
hour after hour in wordless com- 
munion. A part of him rebelled, a 
part of him screamed soundlessly 
and envisaged hard fists smashing 
those great, faceted eyes, heavy 
boots crashing through fragile 
chitin. A part of him rebelled — 
but was powerless and she knew 
it. She was female and he was 
male and the tensions were inevi- 
table, and enjoyable to one if not 
to the other. 

And then Deane said to him, 
“She is tiring of her tasteless 
food.” 

She would be, thought Grimes 



dully. And then there was the 
urge to placate, to please. Al- 
though he had never made a deep 
study of the arthropodal race he 
knew, as did all spacemen, which 
Terran luxuries were appreciated 
by the Shaara. He went up to his 
quarters, found what he was look- 
ing for. He decanted the fluid 
from its glass container into a 
squeeze bottle. Had it been in- 
tended for human consumption 
this would not have been neces- 
sary, now that the ship was accel- 
erating — but Shaara queens do 
not, ever, feed themselves. 

He went back to the throne- 
room. Deane and the huge arthro- 
pod watched him. The Queen’s 
eyes were even brighter than usu- 
al. She lifted her forelimbs as 
though to take the bottle from 
Grimes, then let them fall to her 
side. Her gauzy wings were quiv- 
ering in anticipation. 

Grimes approached her slowly. 
He kneeled before her, holding 
the bottle before him. He raised 
it carefully, the nippled end to- 
ward the working mandibles. He 
squeezed and a thin, amber stream 
shot out. Its odor was rich and 
heavy in the almost still air of the 
compartment. 

More\ 

The word formed itself in his 
mind. He went on squeezing. 

But — you are not a worker. You 
are a drone . . . 

The word “drone” denoted 
masculinity, not idleness. 



70 



GALAXY 




You are a drone. You shall be 
the first father of the new Hive . . . 

“Candy is dandy, but liquor is 
quicker,” muttered Deane, strug- 
gling to maintain a straight face. 

Grimes glared at the telepath. 
What was so funny about this? He 
was feeling, strongly, the stirrings 
of desire. She was female — and in 
his mind’s eye those flimsy wings 
were transparent draperies en- 
hancing, not concealing, the sym- 
metry of the form of a lovely wo- 
man — slim, with high, firm 
breasts, with long, slender legs. 
She wanted him to be her mate, 
her consort. 

She wanted him. 

She . . . 

Suddenly the vision flickered 
out. 

This was no woman spread in 
alluring, naked abandon. 

This was no more than a repul- 
sive insect sprawled in drunken 
untidiness, desecrating the flag 
that had been spread over the 
table. The wings were crumpled. 
A dull film was over the faceted 



eyes. A yellowish ichor oozed 
from among the still-working man- 
dibles. 

Grimes retched violently. 

“Captain.” Deane’s voice was 
urgent. “She’s out like a light. 
She’s drunk as a fiddler’s bitch — ” 

“And we must keep her that 
way,” snapped Grimes. He was 
himself again. He strode to the 
nearest bulkhead pickup. “Atten- 
tion, all hands. This is the Captain 
speaking. Shut down inertial and 
interstellar drive units. Energize 
Carlotti transceiver. Contact any 
and all shipping in the vicinity and 
request aid as soon as possible. Say 
that we are drifting with main en- 
gines inoperable.” He turned to 
Deane. “I’m leaving you in charge. 
Spooky. If she shows signs of 
breaking surface you know what to 
do.” He looked sternly at the 
telepath. “I suppose I can trust 
you.” 

“You can,” the Psionic Com- 
munications Officer assured him. 
“You can. Indeed you can. Cap- 
tain. I wasn’t looking forward at 



The Region Between . A Novella . Harlan Ellison 



At this writing no one knows what the next 
issue of GALAXY will look like— we are letting 
it take whatever shape is necessary to contain 

THE REGION BETWEEN 

DON'T MISS IT! 



SLEEPING BEAUTY 



71 






all at all to ending my days as a 
worker in some peculiar Terran- 
Shaara Hive.” He stared at Grimes 
thoughtfully. “I wonder if the 
union would have been fertile.” 
“That will do, Mr. Deane,” 
growled Grimes. 

“PANTASTIC,” breathed Com- 
^modore Damien. “Fantastic. Al- 
most, Mr. Grimes, I feel a certain 
envy. The things you get up to.” 
The aroma of good whisky hung 
heavily in the air of the Commo- 
dore’s office. Yet Damien, while 
not an abstainer, was not touching 
the stuff. And though Grimes’ 
tastes were catholic, on an occasion 
such as this he preferred to be 
stone cold sober. 

“It is more than fantastic,” said 
the Shaara Queen-Emissary, the 
special envoy of the Empress her- 
self. Had she not been using a 
voice box her words would have 
been a snarl. “It is — disgusting. 
Reprehensible. This officer forced 
liquor down the throat of a mem- 
ber of our Royal family. He — ” 

“He twisted her arm?” sug- 
gested the commodore. 

“I do not understand. But she 
is now Queen Mother of Brooum. 
A drunken, even alcoholic Queen 
Mother.” 

“I saved my ship and my peo- 
ple,” stated Grimes woodenly. 
Damien grinned unpleasantly. 
“Isn’t this where we came in. 
Lieutenant? But no matter. There 
are affairs of far more pressing 



urgency. Not only do I have to 
cope with a direct complaint from 
the personal representative of Her 
Imperial Majesty — ” 

Even though she was wearing 
a voice box the Queen-Emissary 
contrived to hiccough. And all 
this. Grimes knew, was going 
down on tape. It was unlikely that 
he would ever wear the ribbon of 
the Order of the Golden Honey- 
flower — but it was equally un- 
likely that he would be butchered 
to make a Shaara holiday. 

“He weaned her on Scotch,” 
persisted the Queen-Emissary. 

“Aren’t you, perhaps, a little 
Jealous?” suggested Damien. He 
switched his attention back to 
Grimes. “Meanwhile, Lieutenant, 

I am being literally bombarded 
with Carlottigrams from Her not- 
so-lmperial Majesty on Brooum. 
She demands that I dispatch to 
her, as soon as possible if not be- 
fore, the only drone in the Galaxy 
with whom she would dream of 
mating.” 

“No!” protested Grimes. “No!” 
“Yes, Mister. Yes. For two pins 
I’d accede to her demands.” He 
sighed regretfully. “But I suppose 
that one must draw some sort of 
line somewhere.” 

He sighed again. Then: “Get 
out, you drone!” he yelled 
wildly. 

It was a pity that he had to spoil 
the effect by laughing. 

“We are not amused,” said the 
Shaara Queen. it 



72 



GALAXY 





They dangled from taut lines, small 
beneath the stars, barbed shadows deep up- 
on their faces and engraved arithmetic high 
upon their chests. Together they swayed 
like October scarecrows, 1939 in their eyes. 

Their heads were bent as though they 
might be listening, and maybe they heard 
the wind. 

There was a wind upon the Crying Wall 
that whipped from stone to stone, howled 
for fifteen thou,sand years and, wearing 
dust, moved on . . . 




74 



GALAXY 






T he last moon was just up, the color of splashed 
blood, arching behind the closely strung confetti 
balls of cobalt, amber, crystaLand tea, and the foun- 
tainleaf trees were already twitching in the rising 
Third Wind, when the first light, the softest light, 
the Wanting Light of the Festival, twinked on. The 
ghost-white candlelamp flickered and flared, moved 
slowly and smoothly up the Great Slanted Tower, 
attained the crest where it shot off tiny sparks of 
firefly lightning, dipped a lonely salute to the Spir- 
its of All the Stars and was quickly and utterly lost 
among the Billion and One Lights of the Festival. 
Like a sudden thunderclap out of the Fourth Sky, 
the momentary ceremonial silence was shattered by a 
thousand electric marching bands, a hundred mas- 
sive steam organs, ten mighty wind clappers and a 
single great tide horn, all under the masterful direc- 
tion of a long silver tapeworm named Fest. Mus. 999. 




THE LAST NIGHTOF THE FESTIVAL 



75 






Now the slowly climbing Five Reflections of Love 
were trailed by the artificial moons, a thousand 
painted balloons swarming in a sequined formation 
like brilliant weaver-bolls soaring in the late wind. A 
billion people seethed within the glare and the blare, 
among the games and the contests, the shows and 
the fairs, the taverns and the arenas, the rides and 
the parades and the prizes, rollicking up boulevarded 
midways or holding hands down sheltered paths in 
picnic groves, all of them in crowds or in pairs — none 
of them alone — for it was the Last Night of the Fes- 
tival. 

A girl — or perhaps a woman — stood in the tum- 
bling light of a meteor bush that budded with fiercely 
darting coals, her eyelids lightly closed, smiling a 
whisper into the wind. 

“Did you feel your Want?” 

A man — or perhaps a boy -stood in the gentle 




76 



GALAXY 






shadow of a thundercloud tree that stirred with fall- 
ing vapor leaves, his eyelids tightly closed, sighing a 
whisper into the wind. 

“We have all felt our Want for tonight.” 

When the girl opened her eyes they were all milk 
and black cherries, wide and deep and glazed by 
polished crystal. Her hair was weathered ivory, 
vaguely set with twisting caverns that shifted and 
yawned and were quietly sealed by the wind. And 
sometimes, when the wind was just one way or an- 
other and her head was turned just so, there were 
tiny glintings of tinted stones that twinkled far with- 
in delicately latticed strands, never staying very long, 
for the wind liked to change her hair. Once she tilted 
her head and the wind exposed a cloudy pink pearl 
streaked over with pale ivory, so that it looked some- 
thing like the thing called Sunrise. Her name was 
Dawn. 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



77 





When the man opened his eyes they were all sand 
and slate-pebbles, slim and flat and shrouded by 
swirled smoke. His body was sculptured midnight, 
starkly set with gaunt outlines that were steeled 
in the wind. And sometimes, when the wind was just 
one way or another and his stance was frozen just so, 
there were whispered rustlings of ebony robes that 
flapped like tiny moth wings, never staying very long, 
for the wind had little to alter. Once he raised a hand 
and the wind swept away, whirring toward the 
gloomy Third Sky, so that it sounded something like 
the thing called Sunset. His name was Dusk. 

Boldly, in the light of all the moons. Dusk stepped 
across the slim path of speckled silver tiles that lay 
like freshly minted coins and, taking Dawn by the 
hand, led her onto and along the tinkling metal trail, 
on past the alley of Fog and Mist where they kicked 
crackling sparks at the nebulous void. They contin- 




78 



GALAXY 





ued past the fragrant brazen torches of the Magic 
Lantern Tavern and strolled on toward the nearer 
end of the great oval span called the Bridge of Heady 
Wines. 

Oktoberfest, Jrauleins undressed, 
and castles on the Rhine ... 

AS HE held her hand lightly and yet firmly he felt 
^the stub of her missing finger, still strangely alien 
to his touch, though he had known that hand, that 
tender abortion, most of his life. He had been there — 
so very long ago — when they had taken that finger. 
And though he hadn’t looked and hadn’t seen the 
blood and had avoided the monstrous gaping — or 
perhaps the horribly tight closing — of her eyes, he 
had heard the grating teeth of the Silver Witch Saw 
and the very long, very shrill, very young scream. 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



79 





Again he remembered the quiet laugh of the Silver 
Witch artisan, so low in pitch behind the wavering 
wail, so very much like the faint chuckling drone of 
grinding marrow. The Laughing Butcher they had 
called him, for it seemed he had always been in a 
merry mood whenever he had worked, and his work- 
ing hours had been long. The Wisdom Machine 
never thought of that, murmured a portion of Dusk’s 
mind or a shred of his soul. Such a tiny little thing, 
hardly worth replacing . . . and the blazing lights 
of the Festival were lost in his swirling eyes. 

Guns and butter, slogans to utter, 
and a finger to point the way . . . 

T hey strolled, very close to each other, up the 
curved ramp that was the Bridge of Heady Wines, 
savoring the new-wine scents and the vintage-wine 
aromas, cherishing the windblown come-follow-your- 




80 



GALAXY 






nose tastes that lolled about their quivering nostrils 
and rolled across their titillated tongues, while their 
eyes constantly shifted from the spinning pepper- 
mint-stick sign poles of the wine stalls that lined the 
way to the giddy, sometimes gaudy. Festival grounds 
below. 

At the very summit they paused a long pause, shar- 
ing a jeweled goblet of fine old meteor-bush wine, 
still holding hands, now feeling a summer-lightning 
sensation of quiet excitement, somehow knowing that 
this was the grandest night of all. 

The girl waved the drained chalice, flashing it 
into the brilliant night like a Wisdom Day sparkler, 
casting its crystal fires toward the cragged outline 
of the Crooked Stick Tower that staggered upward 
to lean dizzily against the flight of all the moons. 
Tossing her whirlpool hair, she tugged at Dusk’s 
hand. He nodded, robes swishing, and they fell to- 
gether onto the sleek snowflake slide that spiraled 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



81 






them down from the center of the bridge and directly 
into Silly Street. 

Dropping softly into the crowd that moved slow- 
ly toward the slim twisted building at the end of the 
street, Dawn and Dusk gamboled gaily through the 
ankle-deep rainbow mist they had entered. There 
they encountered the unseen minor horrors of slip- 
pery patches, squashy bogs, icy pools and reversing 
conveyor belts. Together they detonated three stench 
devices, six electric shockers and nine steam-gushers. 
Somehow they evaded the falling water bags at the 
end of the road and the pie-throwing machines 
never came really close to hitting them. Dawn gig- 
gled and Dusk smiled. 

The couple skipped aside from the street and the 
crowd at the tipsy rocking-arch entrance of the 
Crooked Stick Tower — to rest for a moment on the 
softly flickering candletip grass — when they noticed 
in a small lonely shadow the Old Happy One. He 




82 



GALAXY 







lay in his ivy-draped basket of burnished bronze 
beside the ebony mosses of the Wanting Well Shrine, 
near the three broken stones that were all that re- 
mained of the ancient Crying Wall. 

Dawn and Dusk walked over and looked at the 
thing in the basket and Dusk recalled the old tales 
of how the Laughing Butcher had lavished his talents 
upon this, the eldest of the Final Fifteen. Dusk had 
been young when the Silver Witch had very slowly, 
with deftly-gnawing slices, altered this creature that 
had once been a whole man. Little by little, over 
many days, it had been said, his limbs were shorn. 
And then he had had no tongue. Then his eyes and 
ears, too, were gone and at the very end his testicles 
had been placed into little matching jars of the clear- 
est crystal. 

The Laughing Butcher had — or so it had been 
told — grown quite sad toward the end of that, his 
pet project, and a few had even insisted that he had 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



83 





cried. For somehow, and no one had ever attempted 
to explain why, the old man had always seemed the 
happier of the two, never bothering to scream or 
shudder, but always smiling or grinning or even jest- 
ing aloud when he had still had his tongue. 

As Dawn and Dusk looked down the Old Happy 
One turned his hairless head and smiled a toothless, 
tongueless smile at them. The Old Happy One could 
always sense the presence of others, it was claimed. 
Dawn and Dusk patted him gently on his scarred 
head and left him lying there, alone with his secret 
happy thoughts. 

Liederhosen, gas the Chosen, and 
Dortmunder out oj a keg . . . 

W E DIDN’T Want at the Shrine,” whispered 
Dawn, hesitating. 

“He Wanted for us,” said Dusk, pulling her away 
and across the shimmering lawn. 




84 



GALAXY 





Skirting the bizarre tower with its shrieking devil- 
tries, they wandered through an adjacent grove of 
fountainleaf trees and, happening to glance upward 
through the cascading sheets of transparent leaves, 
they glimpsed a sweeping formation of electric drag- 
onbirds, a zee-shaped silhouette against the gleam- 
ing moons, streaking toward the Second Sky, trail- 
ing pulsing flashes of autumn hearthfire. 

“Even they know it’s the Last Night of the Festi- 
val,” murmured Dawn, a wisp of her hair flicking up- 
on her forehead to reveal a tarnished lantern stone, 
her eyes even wider than usual. 

Near the edge of the small forest they passed a re- 
clining couple who wore chameleon Wanting Masks, 
and each face-covering splashed into contrasting 
halves as Dawn and Dusk walked by. 

Upon leaving the glade they encountered the bleak 
gurgling pool known as the Pond of Wanting Wis- 
dom. Dusk hopped along the phosphorescent step- 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



85 






ping stones that traversed the restless surface of 
swirling cross currents but Dawn took the long way 
around, meeting him on the other side, where he 
stood waiting to lead her across the glittering metal 
hill called the Bronze Knoll. 

They were clattering over the polished mound, a 
vast convex sky mirror spread with rolling moons 
and wheeling stars, when they were dazzled by the 
dancing streaks of the nightly artificial meteor 
shower. 

“I didn’t realize that it was quite that late,” sighed 
Dusk and he hurried Dawn along, pulling her to- 
ward the distant fanciful chaos of the inner Festival 
grounds. 

When they reached the Path of Pain they removed 
their steel sandals and walked as softly as they could 
upon the shifting ashes, for there were fifteen thou- 
sand years of fifteen million tribal ancestors grinding 




86 



GALAXY 






beneath their knowing feet. The ribbon of gray pow- 
der led them under the crimson-stained Gate of 
Blood and Dawn and Dusk bowed their heads rev- 
erently as they passed through. A few steps beyond 
the creaking wooden arch they paused beside the 
Final Grotto where the preserved blood of those of 
the Final Fifteen — who had gone on to join the Spir- 
its of All the Stars — trickled and flowed in a sunken 
rocky pool. Of the fifteen clustered Forever Lamps, 
twelve flickered ruby flames from thin, crackling 
wicks. 

“The Old Happy One — and us,” said Dawn very 
quietly, her great tender eyes studying the three 
well-primed needle torches, each perched in its 
own little niche, each so calm and dark — a stark 
lonely gap in the center and a lightly touching pair 
at the end. 



The Third Wind suddenly shifted like a whirring 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



87 





whip, slashing the line of fires, one by one, yet very 
hastily, momentarily snuffing them into tiny em- 
bers, finally fanning them into thrashing flares that 
leaped toward the stars. The two unlit lamps at the 
end of the row tinkled together and struck a single 
topaz spark. 

Holding hands. Dawn and Dusk lit mental For- 
ever Lamps, felt their Final Wants and moved on. 

Just down the sacred lane, they stopped at a rock- 
hewn table upon which rested, for anyone there to 
see, a great, delicately crafted silver key. 

“The Key to the Wisdom Machine,” said Dusk. 
“Beaten and forged from the Silver Witch Saw.” 

Again, he felt the stub of Dawn’s missing finger. 

Together they pondered the inscription mounted 
on the slab: 

May you ever walk 'twixt Dawn and Dusk, 

And your Wanting Well run deep. 




90 



GALAXY 





After a very long, very tender moment Dusk said, 
“Come — ” and they continued along the somber 
path that was strangely dull and flat beneath the 
reeling sky. 

They donned their sandals at the Twisted Gate 
and joined the copper-cobbled road that carried 
them with clicking steps into the abrupt tumult of 
the Great Midway. 

An electric dragon bird landed at their feet with a 
violent flutter of gold-leaf feathers, squawked a ter- 
rible cry, flashed white-hot metal skin and fused 
into a squirming mass at the crossroad. 

“It broke,” moaned Dawn, turning away, a look of 
deep pity in her eyes. 

“It wouldn’t leave with the others,” said Dusk sol- 
emnly, and he unfurled an enrobed arm around the 
girl’s quivering shoulders to steer her into the heart 
of the midway throng. 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



91 






The golden goose, steppes for free 
use, and Christmas tea at the Palace . . . 

F lowing with the mainstream of the crowd, 
they rammed their way along the broad, sweeping 
boulevard, passing the gaily decorated Wisdom 
Trees lining either side. They milled about a dueling 
pair of electric swordsmen until the bulk of the ca- 
pricious audience surged toward the Tunnel of No 
Return. Dawn and Dusk rebelled at that and jostled 
their way into a tributary channel of crushing hu- 
manity, to enter the screaming area of the Spider 
and the Fly. 

Dawn volunteered to be a fly and Dusk helped 
her aboard the crystal-winged vehicle. He waved 
her off into the buzzing, flapping wind and buckled 
himself into the saddle of a brown, hairy spider that 
waited, throbbing, with twitching, stilted legs. 




92 



GALAXY 






With a shuffle-gaited patter the spider churned 
up the slanted starting boom, its jeweled scanner- 
eyes winking in intricate relays while its interior 
homing devices hummed with an impatient pitch. 
Dusk closed his eyes when the tensed monster, with 
a series of muffled clicks, sprang outward into space, 
falling, trailing a gleaming flash of quicksilver. 

As the spider spun its tactical chart Dusk opened 
his eyes to locate Dawn. He knew precisely where to 
look and, when he found her flittering fly, he gave 
her a sweeping wave that she quickly returned. He 
glanced around to take in the chaotic scene, taking 
a mild interest in the complex maneuvers of the other 
aerial duels. From the very beginning of his own 
spider’s moves, he had known in detail what its ac- 
tions and its opposing fly’s actions would be. His 
spider scurried upward and Dusk glanced down at 
its turgid web, seeing the long lines of metal that 
formed a vicious pattern. It reminded him of the 




THE LASTNIGHTOFTHE FESTIVAL 



93 






Final Camp. There, too, there had been long lines 
of metal, forming the periphery that had held the 
Silver Witch, the Laughing Butcher, Dawn, the oth- 
ers of the Final Fifteen and, finally, the Final Ex- 
periment. He closed his eyes again, remembering that 
there had been yet other wires . . . and electrodes . . . 
and sophisticated pain. 

Stuka flights, panzer fights, and the 
kids tucked away at camp . . . 

A CHIME sounded above the shrieks of the Festival 
and of his mind and Dusk opened his eyes to see 
Dawn’s fly at his side. 

She laughed. “The spider always catches the fly.’’ 
“Unless there’s a technical failure,” he replied, 
reaching out to touch her hand before she whisked 
away and before his spider raced to retrieve its web. 




94 



GALAXY 





Back on the ground they tested their equilibrium 
and found it wanting when Dawn staggered into 
Dusk’s vaguely unsteady stance. Dusk held her for a 
time, his robes slightly ruffled, and Dawn giggled a 
little in his arms, her hair lightly fluffed, until they 
both recovered their balance and the girl became 
serious enough to brush her lips against his cheek. 
He returned her kiss with a longer kiss upon her lips 
and when he opened his eyes he found a speck of 
coral flint in her strangely calm hair. 

“Y our hair is a mess.” 

He laughed and he led her through an exit and 
back onto the midway. 

The crowds were more subdued now, though just 
as large, and Dawn and Dusk were more leisurely 
in their passage along the vast thoroughfare. The 
couple wandered with an easy cadence, routinely 
swinging their heads from side to side, like the 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



95 




sweeping Final Camp scanner-globes they had 
known before the Final Experiment. They sauntered 
by the dim shaft of the Cave of Many Echoes, the 
distant mellow chatter of the Rain on the Roof 
Lounge, the burbling hiss of the Fountain of Flow- 
ing Metals, where Dawn had once, very long ago, 
cast a garnet locket into the molten spray to feel a 
solemn Want, and on by their old trysting haunt, 
the Garden of Tender Dreams. A purring rotor-ferry 
spidered its way down to the Five Winds Landing 
Port, back from its pyramid course to the rustic Out- 
er Inn and the eerie Never Moor. They watched a 
troupe of cavorting robot clowns near the pleasant 
din of the Great Candyrock Bell and turned to wave 
at a hayride party hauled by the measured trotting 
of an electric pony. The Lazy Lagoon was next on 
their right, limpid with barely rippling moons and 
stars, and the churning sightseeing cruiser. Star 




96 



GALAXY 





Trawler, was easing into its berth, so Dawn and 
Dusk skipped along to greet it. 



There was much waving and cheering as the craft 
touched land and impatient adventurers crowded to 
displace the disembarking passengers. 

“Look,” said Dawn, pointing, as a column of elec- 
tric rats scurried down a quivering mooring line, 
scuffling over the moonlit dock with their tiny metal 
claws until they were quickly lost in secret dusty 
shadows. 

“They know,” said Dusk, just as the evening’s arti- 
ficial Surprise Shower began to sting the wind. 

The nearest shelter was the boat but the over- 
flowing crowd barred Dawn and Dusk from seeking 
that refuge and they sprinted through the drizzle 
toward the neighboring merry-go-round. Over their 
shoulders they heard a mariner’s shout; “Last time 
around — last time around!” There was a chugging 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



97 






throb and a swishing splash and Dawn and Dusk 
stopped, turning and looking back into the gentle 
rain to wave the shimmering raindrops from their 
faces and toward the embarking adventurers. 

“The last time around,” whispered Dawn. 

“There wasn’t room,” said Dusk. 

They walked hand in hand, not minding the show- 
er, toward the tinkling whirl of the merry-go-round. 

Beneath a brocaded circular awning that hung 
with polished leather bells they leaned against a 
flowered railing and watched the fun go by. They 
watched and remembered the older times and, quiet- 
ly, they talked. 

Peenemunde, church on Sunday, and a U- 
boat down at the pier . . . 



R emember the Final Experiment?” asked 
Dawn. 

“And how it failed,” said Dusk. “And somehow. 




98 



GALAXY 







with the Grace of the Spirits of All the Stars, we 
survived.” 

“Sometimes when I look at something very, very 
beautiful or hear the wind at night I can still feel — 
the pain.” 

Dawn looked away from a prancing copper stal- 
lion with a dazzling crown on its head. 

“But the Final Fifteen became mental gods and 
we freed ourselves and built the Wisdom Machine.” 

“It was to have been wise,” sighed Dawn. 

“Perhaps it was.” Dusk noticed a sudden silence 
upon the awning overhead. “All of this, down to the 
Surprise Shower, was planned by the Wisdom Ma- 
chine.” 

“It had but one order — to make the entire world 
happy forever.” 

“Our people had suffered so.” 

“After all its researches and surveys it built the 
Festival.” Dawn plucked a pastel flower from the 




THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL 



99 






railing. “People were found happiest in a carnival 
spirit.” 

“A perpetual Festival,” said Dusk. “It had to go 
on forever or the Machine would have failed in its 
task.” 

“It had no choice.” 

“There is an impeccable logic in the safeguard of 
the Final Solution Device.” Dusk held an arm to- 
ward the merry-go-round. “Last time around?” 

Dawn said, “Why not?” 

Together they mounted a pink elephant that stag- 
gered as it lumbered in its arc and stopped. 

An old man who had jumped from a silver tiger 
calmly kicked a buzzing box, smashing it. 

“We have all felt our Want for tonight,” mur- 
mured Dawn. 

Tannenbaum, with Lebensraum, and 
a VW in every garage . . . 




100 



GALAXY 





D awn and Dusk dashed outside and all through 
the Festival rides were halting and lights were go- 
ing out. 

Two men passed by, carrying the basket of the Old 
Happy One toward the Tomb of the Laughing 
Butcher, just down the midway. 

“Is he dead?” asked Dawn. 

“I don’t know,” replied Dusk. 

There was a far, far howling, perhaps from the 
Fourth Sky, and it moaned high over the Festival 
and was gone. 

A clanking robot ran down the center of the Great 
Midway, shouting, “Hey, Rube — hey. Rube!” 

Dawn and Dusk said nothing but their eyes were 
on the sky. 

The last moon was almost down — the color of 
splashed blood — arching behind the silent fountain- 
leaf trees. And the sighing Third Wind was already 




THE LAST NIGHTOF THE FESTIVAL 



101 






dying in the night when the clearest bell, the deepest 
bell, the Wisdom-hour Bell, tolled the time. Like a 
sudden zephyr out of the Second Sky a frantic robot 
raced among the crowds, hawking dark glasses at 
the top of its plastic lungs while somewhere a shining 
tapeworm of whirring silver instinctively spun a web 
of crackling strands. Now the artificial moons began 
to burst their painted sides, spreading their brilliant 
colors like rainbow fires across the Spirits of All the 
Stars. A billion people watched beneath the glare 
and the blare, standing in intimate pairs or forming 
in casual little groups, talking quietly to each other, 
saying, “The fireworks are lovely — ” or, “Good- 
night — ” and, “Wasn’t it a grand Festival?” 

And Dawn and Dusk stood side by side holding 
hands and it seemed to Dusk for just a fleeting mo- 
ment that Dawn’s whole finger was there in place of 
the alien stub. 




102 



GALAXY 






“Just like the Sunrise,” murmured Dawn. 

“The Sun always sets,” sighed Dusk. 

Dawn and Dusk turned slowly to face each other 
and looked very deeply into each other’s eyes, as if 
each were giving something and each were taking 
something. And somehow their eyes were blending 
and becoming alike until their eyes were flowing 
silver. 

An icicle music box whirled its dripping gears 
and tinkled, an electric cricket rolled onto its back 
with kicking copper legs and chirped. And deep 
thunder crashed in all of the Five Skies. 

It was the Last Night of the Festival. 

Above the swaying scarecrows, a 
white star suddenly flickered and grew 
bright. And maybe the bent heads noticed 
it, but there was 1939 in their eyes. ■¥• 




THE LASTNIGHTOFTHE FESTIVAL 



103 





WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE 

EDMUND GUNDERSEN, a 
former sector chief on Holman’s 
World, an Earth colony, returns to 
the planet as little more than a 
tourist after Earth has restored it 
to the control of its indigenes, an 
intelligent elephantine life form, 
the nildoror. The planet is now 
known by its native name of Bel- 
zagor. 

Gundersen’s return has been 
dictated by an inner need on his 



part to learn more about the intelli- 
gent species he once treated and 
abused as animals. 

The nildoror understand and 
sympathize and one of them, Srin'- 
gahar, agrees to carry Gundersen 
to the nearest nildor encampment, 
where he can apply for a travel 
permit. 

A t the encampment Gunderson 
meets Vol’himyor, an ancient, 
many-born nildor, requests per- 
mission to go to the nildoror place 
of rebirth, the mist country. He is 



ROBEHr SILVIRBERG 



part'Ih 



DOWIMUUARD 






TO THE EARTH 



invited to spend some time with his 
hosts before permission is granted 
— and that night finds himself 
joining them in an elemental, ritu- 
als tic dance. 

He is shocked to discover that in 
so doing is able to share himself 
completely with the nildoror, in ef- 
fect becoming one of them. 

The nildoror, however, are per- 
fectly willing to accept him and in 
the morning Gundersen receives 
his permission and is assigned an 
escort to the mist country. His un- 



derstanding of his hosts deepens 
during the ensuing journey — as 
does his understanding of the 
planet. Or at least the dangers of 
going native. His trail crosses that 
of two of the planet’s leftover 
humans, a man and a woman, 
both dying, having become the 
hosts to one of Belzagor's more 
dangerous life forms. 

They ask to be put out of their 
misery. Gundersen kills them, 
continues his journey to the mist 
country. 



105 






IX 

A WHITE wall of water seemed 
to descend from the sky. Noth- 
ing on Earth could match the triple 
plunge of the great cataract. Here 
Madden’s River — or the Seran’- 
nee — dropped five hundred meters, 
then six hundred, then five hun- 
dred, then five hundred more, fall- 
ing from ledge to ledge in its tum- 
ble toward the sea. Gundersen and 
the five nildoror stood at the foot 
of the falls, where the entire vio- 
lent cascade crashed into a broad 
rock-flanged basin out of which 
the serpentine river continued its 
southeasterly course. The sulidor 
had taken his leave in the night and 
was proceeding northward by his 
own route. To Gundersen’s rear 
behind his right shoulder, lay the 
coastal plain. The central plateau 
lay to his left. Before him, by the 
head of the falls, began the north- 
ern plateau, the highlands that con- 
trolled the approach to the mist 
country. Just as a titanic north- 
south rift cut the coastal plain off 
from the central plateau, so did 
another rift running east-west 
separate both plateau and plain 
from the highlands ahead. 

His party began its ascent. The 
Shangri-la station, one of the 
Company’s most important out- 
posts, was invisible from below. It 
was set back a short way from the 
head of the falls. Once there had 
been waystations at the foot of the 
falls and at the head of the middle 
cataract but no trace of these 
structures remained. The jungle 
had swallowed them utterly in only 
eight years. A winding road with an 



infinity of switchbacks led upward. 

The swaying rhythm of his 
mount lulled Gundersen into a 
doze. He held tightly to Srin’ga- 
har’s pommel-like protrusions and 
prayed that in his grogginess he 
would not fall off. Once he woke 
suddenly and found himself cling- 
ing only by his left hand, his body 
partly slung out over a sheer drop 
of at least two hundred meters. 
Another time, drowsy again, he 
felt cold spray and snapped to at- 
tention to see the entire cascade of 
the falling river rushing past him 
no more than a dozen meters 
away. The nildoror paused to eat 
at the head of the lowest cataract 
and Gundersen dashed icy water 
in his face to shatter his sluggish- 
ness. They went on. He had less 
difficulty keeping awake now — the 
air was thinner and the afternoon 
breeze was cool. They reached the 
head of the falls before twilight. 

Shangri-la Station, seemingly 
unchanged, lay before him — three 
rectangular unequal blocks of dark 
shimmering plastic, a somber zig- 
gurat rising on the western bank 
of the narrow gorge through which 
the river sped. The formal gardens 
of tropical plants, established by a 
forgotten sector chief at least forty 
years before, looked as though 
they were being carefully main- 
tained. At ^ach of the building’s 
setbacks was an outdoor veranda 
overlooking the river and these, 
too, were bedecked with plants. 
Gundersen felt a dryness in his 
throat and a tightness in his loins. 

He asked Srin’gahar, “How 
long may we stay here?” 



106 



GALAXY 




‘‘How long do you wish to 
stay?” 

“One day, two — I don’t know.” 

“We are not yet in a great hur- 
ry,” said the nildor. “My friends 
and I will make camp in the bush. 
Come to us when it is time for you 
to go on.” 

The nildoror moved slowly into 
the shadows. Gundersen ap- 
proached the station. At the en- 
trance to the garden he paused. 
The trees here were gnarled and 
bowed. Long feathery fronds 
dangled from them. Highland flora 
was different from that to the 
south, although perpetual summer 
ruled here even as in the true trop- 
ics behind him. Lights glimmered 
within the station. Everything out 
here seemed surprisingly orderly — 
the contrast with the shambles of 
the serpent station and the night- 
mare decay of the fungoid station 
was sharp. Not even the hotel gar- 
den was this well tended. Four 
neat rows of fleshy, obscene-look- 
ing, pink forest candles bordered 
the walkway that ran toward the 
building. Slender, stately globe- 
flower trees, heavy with gigantic 
fruit, formed little groves to left 
and right. There were hullygully 
trees and bitterfruits — exotics 
here, imported from the steaming 
equatorial tropics — and mighty 
swordflower trees in full bloom, 
lifting their long shining stamens 
to the sky. Elegant glitterivy and 
spiceburr vines writhed along the 
ground but not in any random 
way. Gundersen took a few steps 
farther in and heard the soft sad 
sigh of a sensifrons bush, whose 
gentle hairy leaves coiled and 



shrank as he went by, opening 
wearily when he had gone past, 
shutting again when he whirled to 
steal a quick glance. 

Two more steps and he came to 
a low tree whose name he could 
not recall, with glossy red winged 
leaves that took flight, breaking 
free of their delicate stems and 
soaring away; instantly their re- 
placements began to sprout. The 
garden was magical. Yet there 
were surprises here. Beyond the 
glitterivy he discovered a crescent 
patch of tiger moss, the carnivor- 
ous ground cover native to the un- 
friendly central plateau. The moss 
had been transplanted to other 
parts of the planet — a patch’ of it 
was growing out of control at the 
seacoast hotel — but Gundersen re- 
membered that Seena abhorred it, 
as she abhorred all the productions 
of that forbidding plateau. Worse 
yet, looking upward so that he 
could follow the path of the grace- 
fully gliding leaves, Gundersen 
saw great masses of quivering jel- 
ly, streaked with blue and red 
neural fibers, hanging from sev- 
eral of the biggest trees — more 
carnivores, also natives of the cen- 
tral plateau. What were those sin- 
ister things doing in this en- 
chanted garden? 

A moment later he had a third 
proof that Seena’s terror of the 
plateau had faded. Across his 
path ran one of the plump, thiev- 
ing otterlike animals that had be- 
deviled them the time they had 
been marooned there. It halted a 
moment, nose twitching, cunning 
paws upraised, looking for some- 
thing to seize. Gundersen hissed 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



107 




at it and it scuttled into the shrub- 
bery. 

Now a massive two-legged fig- 
ure emerged from a shadowed 
corner and blocked his way. Gun- 
dersen thought at first it was a 
sulidor, but he realized it was 
merely a robot, probably a gar- 
dener. 

It said resonantly, “Man, why 
are you here?” 

“As a visitor. I’m a traveler 
seeking lodging for the night.” 
“Does the woman expect you?” 
“I’m sure she doesn’t. But 
she’ll be willing to see me. Tell 
her Edmund Gundersen is here.” 
The robot scanned him care- 
fully. “I will tell her. Remain 
where you are and touch noth- 
ing.” 

G undersen waited. The 

twilight deepened and one 
moon appeared. Some of the trees 
in the garden became luminous. A 
serpent — of the sort once used as 
a source of venom — slid silently 
across the path just in front of 
Gundersen and vanished. The 
wind shifted, stirring the trees and 
bringing him the faint sounds of a 
conversation of nildoror some- 
where not far inland from the 
riverbank. 

The robot returned and said, 
“The woman will see you. Follow 
the path and enter the station.” 
Gundersen went up the steps. 
On the porch he noticed unfamil- 
iar-looking potted plants, scat- 
tered casually as though awaiting 
transplantation to the garden. 
Several of them waved tendrils at 
him or wistfully flashed lights in- 



tended to bring curious prey fa- 
tally close. He went in and, seeing 
no one on the ground floor, 
caught hold of a dangling ladder- 
coil and let himself be spun up to 
the first veranda. He observed 
that the station was as flawlessly 
maintained within as without, 
every surface clean and bright, the 
decorative murals unfaded, the 
artifacts from many worlds still 
mounted properly in their niches. 
This station had always been a 
showplace but he was surprised to 
see it so attractive in these years 
of the decay of Earth’s presence 
on Belzagor.' 

“Seena?” he called. 

He found her alone on the ve- 
randa, leaning over the rail. By the 
light of two moons he saw the 
deep cleft of her buttocks and 
thought she had chosen to greet 
him in the nude. But as she 
turned toward him he realized 
that a strange garment covered 
the front of her body. It was a 
pale, gelatinous sprawl, shapeless, 
purple-tinged, with the texture 
and sheen that he imagined an 
immense amoeba might have. The 
central mass of it embraced her 
belly and loins, leaving her hips 
and haunches bare. Her left 
breast also was bare but one 
broad pseudopod extended up- 
ward over tl^e right one. The stuff 
was translucent, and Gundersen 
plainly could see the red eye of 
her covered nipple, and the nar- 
row socket of her navel. It was 
also alive to some degree, for it 
began to flow, apparently of its 
own will, sending out slow new 
strands that encircled her left 



108 



GALAXY 




thigh and, gradually, her right hip. 

The eeriness of this clinging 
garment left him taken aback. 
Except for it, she appeared to be 
the Seena of old. She had gained 
some weight and her breasts were 
heavier, her hips broader. She was 
a handsome woman in the last 
bloom of youth. But the Seena of 
old would never have allowed 
such a bizarreness to touch her 
skin. 

She regarded him steadily. Her 
lustrous black hair tumbled to her 
shoulders, as in the past. Her face 
was unlined. She faced him 
squarely and without shame, her 
feet firmly planted, her arms at 
ease, her head held high. 

“I thought you were never com- 
ing back here, Edmund,” she 
said. Her voice had deepened, in- 
dicating some inner deepening as 
well. When he had last known her 
she had tended to speak too 
quickly, nervously pitching her 
tone too high. Now, calm and per- 
fectly poised, she spoke with the 
resonance of a fine cello. “Why 
are you back?” 

“It’s a long story, Seena. I 
can’t even understand all of it 
myself. May I stay here tonight?” 

“Of course. How needless to 
ask!” 

“You look so good, Seena. 
Somehow I expected — after eight 
years — ” 

“A hag?” 

“Well, not exactly.” His eyes 
met hers and he was shaken 
abruptly by the rigidity he found 
in her fixed and inflexible gaze — 
its beadiness reminded him terri- 
fyingly of the expression in the 



eyes of Dykstra and his woman 
at the last jungle station. “I don’t 
know what I expected,” he said. 

“Won’t you kiss me?” she 
asked. 

“I understand you’re a married 
woman.” 

She winced and tightened one 
fist. The thing she was wearing 
reacted also, deepening in color 
and shooting a pseudopod up to 
encircle, though not to conceal, 
her bare breast. 

“Where did you hear that?” 

“At the coast. Van Beneker told 
me you married Jeff Kurtz.” 

“Yes. Not long after you left, 
as a matter of fact.” 

“I see. Is he here?” 

She ignored his question. 
“Don’t you want to kiss me? Or 
do you have a policy about kissing 
other men’s wives?” 

H e EORCED a laugh. Awk- 
wardly, self-consciously, he 
reached for her, taking her lightly 
by the shoulders and drawing her 
toward him. She was a tall wom- 
an. He inclined his head, trying 
to put his lips to hers without 
having any part of his body come 
in contact with the amoeba. She 
pulled back before the kiss. 

“What are you afraid of?” she 
asked. 

“What you’re wearing makes 
me nervous.” 

“The slider?” 

“If that’s what it’s called.” 

“It’s what the sulidoror call it,” 
Seena said. “It comes from the 
central plateau. It clings to one of 
the big mammals there and lives 
by metabolizing perspiration. Isn’t 
it splendid?” 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



109 




“I thought you hated the pla- 
teau.” 

“Oh, that was a long time ago. 
I’ve been there many times. I 
brought the slider back on the last 
trip. It’s as much of a pet as it is 
something to wear. Look.” 

She touched it lightly and it 
went through a series of color 
changes, expanding as it ap- 
proached the blue end of the spec- 
trum, contracting toward the red. 
At its greatest extension it formed 
a complete tunic covering Seena 
from throat to thighs. Gundersen 
became aware of something dark 
and pulsing at the heart of it, 
resting just above her loins, hiding 
the public triangle — its nerve-cen- 
ter, perhaps. 

“Why do you dislike it?” she 
asked. “Here. Put your hand on 
it.” 

He made no move. She took his 
hand in hers and touched it to her 
side; he felt the slider’s cool dry 
surface and was surprised that it 
was not slimy. Easily Seena 
moved his hand upward until it 
came to the heavy globe of a 
breast and instantly the slider 
contracted, leaving the firm warm 
flesh bare to his fingers. He cup- 
ped it a moment and, uneasy, 
withdrew his hand. 

Her nipple had hardened — her 
nostrils had flared. 

He said, “The slider’s very in- 
teresting. But I don’t like it on 
you.” 

She pouted. 

“Very well.” She touched her- 
self at the base of her belly, just 
above the organism’s core. It 
shrank inward and flowed down 



no 



her leg in one swift, rippling 
movement, gliding away and col- 
lecting itself at the far side of the 
veranda. “Is that better?” Seena 
queried, naked now, sweat-shiny, 
moist-lipped. 

The coarseness of her approach 
startled him. Neither he nor she 
had ever worried much about 
nudity but there was a deliberate 
sexual aggressiveness about this 
kind of self-display that seemed 
out of keeping with what he re- 
garded as her character. They 
were old friends, yes. They had 
been lovers for several years. 
They had been married in all but 
the name for many months of that 
time — but even so the ambiguity 
of their parting should have de- 
stroyed whatever intimacy had 
once existed. And leaving the ques- 
tion of her marriage to Kurtz out 
of it, the fact that they had not 
seen one another for eight years 
seemed to him to dictate the ne- 
cessity of a more gradual return 
to physical closeness. He felt that 
by making herself pantingly avail- 
able to him within minutes of his 
unexpected arrival she was com- 
mitting a breach not of morals 
but of esthetics. 

“Put something on,” he said 
quietly. “And not the slider. I 
can’t have a serious conversation 
with you while you’re waving all 
those jiggling temptations in my 
face.” 

“Poor conventional Edmund. 
All right. Have you had din- 
ner?” 

“No.” 

“I’ll have it served out here. 
And drinks. I’ll be right back.” 



S HE entered the building. The 
slider remained behind on the 
veranda; it rolled tentatively to- 
ward Gundersen, as though offer- 
ing to climb up and be worn by 
him for a while, but he glared at 
it and enough feeling got through 
to make the plateau creature 
move hurriedly away. A moment 
later a robot emerged, bearing a 
tray on which two golden cock- 
tails sat. It offered one drink to 
Gundersen, set the other on the 
railing and noiselessly departed. 

Seena returned, chastely clad 
in a soft gray shift that descended 
from her shoulders to her shins. 
“Better?” she asked. 

“Eor now.” 

They touched glasses. She 
smiled. They put their drinks to 
their lips. 

“What’s it like, living up 
here?” he asked. 

“Serene. I never imagined that 
my life could be so calm. I read a 
good deal. I help the robots tend 
the garden. Occasionally there 
are guests — sometimes I travel. 
Weeks often go by without my 
seeing another human being.” 
“What about your husband?” 
“Weeks often go by without my 
seeing another human being,” she 
repeated. 

“You’re alone here? You and 
the robots?” 

“Quite alone.” 

“But the other Company peo- 
ple must come here fairly fre- 
quently.” 

“Some do. There aren’t many 
of us left now,” Seena said. “Less 
than a hundred, I imagine. About 
six at the Sea of Dust. Van Ben- 



112 



GALAXY 




eker down by the hotel. Four or 
five at the old rift station. And so 
on — little islands of Earthmen 
widely scattered. There’s a sort of 
a social circuit but it’s a sparse 
one.” 

“Is this what you wanted when 
you chose to stay here?” 

“I didn’t know what I wanted, 
except that 1 wanted to stay. But 
I’d do it again. Knowing every- 
thing 1 know, I’d do it just the 
same way.” 

He said, “At the station just 
south of here, below the falls, I 
saw Harold Dykstra — ” 

“Henry Dykstra.” 

“Henry. And a woman I didn’t 
know.” 

“Pauleen Mazor. She was one 
of the customs girls in the time 
of the Company. Henry and 
Pauleen are my closest neighbors, 
I guess. But I haven’t seen them 
in years. I never go south of the 
falls any more and they haven’t 
come here.” 

“They’re dead, Seena.” 

“Oh?” 

“It was like stepping into a 
nightmare. A sulidor led me to 
them. The station was a wreck — 
mold and fungoids everywhere — 
and something was hatching in- 
side them, the larvae of some kind 
of basket-shaped red sponge that 
hung on a wall and dripped black 
oil—” 

“Things like that happen,” 
Seena said, not sounding dis- 
turbed. “Sooner or later this plan- 
et catches everyone, though al- 
ways in a different way.” 

“Dykstra was unconscious and 
the woman was begging to be put 



out of her misery, so you see — ” 
“ Y ou said they were dead.” 

“Not when I got there. I told 
the sulidor to kill them. There 
was no hope of saving them. He 
split them open and then I used 
my torch on them.” 

“We had to do that for Gio’ 
Salamone, too,” Seena 'said. “He 
was staying at Fire Point and 
went out into the Sea of Dust and 
got some kind of crystalline para- 
site into a cut. When Kurtz and 
Ced Cullen found him he was all 
cubes and prisms, outcroppings 
of the most beautiful iridescent 
minerals breaking through his 
skin everywhere. And he was still 
alive. For a while. Another drink?” 
“Please. Yes.” 

She summoned the robot. The 
night was quite dark now. A third 
moon had appeared. 

In a low voice Seena said, “I’m 
so happy you came tonight, Ed- 
mund. It was such a wonderful 
surprise.” 

“Kurtz isn’t here now?” 

“No,” she said. “He’s away 
and I don’t know when he’ll be 
back.” 

“How has it been for him, liv- 
ing here?” 

“I think he’s been quite happy, 
generally speaking. Of course, 
he’s a very strange man.” 

“Heis,” Gundersen said. 

“He’s got a quality of saint- 
hood about him, I think.” 

“He would have been a dark 
and chilling saint, Seena.” 

“Some saints are. They don’t 
all have to be St. Francis of 
Assisi.” 

“Is cruelty one of the desirable 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



113 




traits of a saint?” 

“Kurtz saw cruelty as a dynam- 
ic force. He made himself an 
artist of cruelty.” 

“So did the Marquis de Sade. 
Nobody’s canonized him.” 

“You know what I mean,” she 
said. “You once spoke of Kurtz 
to me and you called him a fallen 
angel. That’s exactly right. I saw 
him out among the nildoror — 
dancing with hundreds of them — 
and they came to him and prac- 
tically worshipped him. There he 
was, talking to them, caressing 
them. And yet also doing the most 
destructive things to them as well, 
but they loved it.” 

“What kind of destructive 
things?” 

“They don’t matter. 1 doubt 
that you’d approve. He — gave 
them drugs, sometimes.” 

“The serpent venom?” 
“Sometimes.” 

“Where is he now? Out playing 
with the nildoror?” 

“He’s been ill for a while.” 

T he robot now was serving 
dinner. Gundersen frowned at 
the strange vegetables on his 
plate. 

“They’re perfectly safe,” Seena 
said. “I grow them myself, in 
back. I’m quite the farmer.” 

“I don’t remember any of 
these.” 

“They’re from the plateau.” 
Gundersen shook his head. 
“When I think of how disgusted 
you were by the plateau, how 
strange and frightening it seemed 
to you that time we had to crash- 
land there — ” 



“I was a child then. When was 
it — eleven years ago? Soon after I 
met you. I was only twenty years 
old. But on Belzagor you must 
defeat what frightens you or you 
will be defeated. 1 went back to 
the plateau. Again and again. It 
ceased to be strange to me and so 
it ceased to frighten me — and so 
I came to love it. And brought 
many of its plants and animals 
back here to live with me. It’s so 
very different from the rest of 
Belzagor — cut off from everything 
else, almost alien.” 

“You went therewith Kurtz?” 

“Sometimes. And sometimes 
with Ced Cullen. And most often 
alone.” 

“Cullen,” Gundersen said. “Do 
you see him often?” 

“Oh, yes. He and Kurtz and I 
have been a kind of triumvirate. 
Cullen’s my other husband — al- 
most.” 

“Where is Cullen now?” he 
asked, looking intently into her 
harsh and glossy eyes. 

Her expression darkened. 

“In the north. The mist coun- 
try.” 

“What’s he doing there?” 

“Why don’t you go ask him?” 
she suggested. 

“I’d like to do just that,” Gun- 
dersen said. “I’m on my way up 
mist country, actually, and this is 
just a sentimental stop on the way. 
I’m traveling with five nildoror 
going for rebirth. They’re camped 
in the bush out there somewhere.” 

She opened a flask of a musky 
gray-green wine and gave him 
some. 

“Why do you want to go to the 



114 



GALAXY 




mist country?” she asked tautly. 

“Curiosity. The same motive 
that sent Cullen up there, I 
guess.” 

“I don’t think his motive was 
curiosity.” 

“Will you amplify that?” 

“I’d rather not,” she said. 

The conversation lapsed into 
silence. Talking to her led only in 
circles, he thought. This new se- 
renity of hers could be madden- 
ing. She told him only what she 
cared to tell him, playing with 
him, seemingly relishing the touch 
of her sweet contralto voice on 
the night air, communicating no 
information at all. This was not 
a Seena he had ever known. The 
girl he had loved had been resil- 
ient and strong, not crafty or 
secretive — there had been an in- 
nocence about her that she 
seemed to have totally lost now. 
Kurtz might not be the only fallen 
angel on this planet. 

He said suddenly, “The fourth 
moon has risen.” 

“Yes. Of course. Is that so, 
amazing?” 

“One rarely sees four even in 
this latitude.” 

“It happens at least ten times a 
year. Why waste your awe? In a 
little while the fifth one will be up 
and — ” 

Gundersen gasped. “Is that 
what tonight is?” 

“The Night of Five Moons, 
yes.” 

“No one told me.” 

“Perhaps you never asked.” 

“Twice I missed it because I 
was at Fire Point. One year I was 
at sea and once I was in the 



southern mist country, the time 
the copter went down. And so on 
and on. I managed to see it only 
once, Seena, right here, ten years 
ago, with you. When things were 
at their best for us. And now, to 
come in by accident and have it 
happen — ” 

“I thought you had arranged to 
be here deliberately. To commem- 
orate that other time.” 

“No. Pure coincidence.” 

“Happy coincidence, then.” 
“When does it rise?” 

“In perhaps an hour.” 

He watched the four bright dots 
swimming through the sky. So 
much time had gone by that he 
had forgotten where the fifth 
moon should be coming from. Its 
orbit was retrograde. It was the 
most brilliant of the moons, too, 
with a high-albedo surface of ice, 
smooth as a mirror. 

Seena filled his glass again. 
They had finished eating. 

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be 
back soon.” 

A lone, he studied the sky and 
tried to comprehend this 
strangely altered Seena, this mys- 
terious woman whose body had 
grown more voluptuous and 
whose soul, it seemed, had turned 
to stone. He saw now that the 
stone had been in her all along — 
at their breakup, for example, 
when he had put in for transfer 
to Earth and she had absolutely 
refused to leave Holman’s World. 
I love you, she had said, and I’ll 
always love you but this is where 
I stay. Why? Why? Because / 
want to stay, she had told him. 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



115 




And she had stayed; and he had 
been just as stubborn and had left 
without her. They had slept to- 
gether on the beach beneath the 
hotel on his last night, so that he 
had boarded the ship that took 
him away with the warmth of her 
body still on his skin. She loved 
him and he loved her but they had 
broken apart, for he saw no future 
on this world and she saw all her 
future on it. And she had married 
Kurtz. And she had explored the 
unknown plateau. And she spoke 
in a rich, deep, new voice and let 
alien amoebas clasp her loins and 
she shrugged at the news that two 
nearby Earth people had died a 
horrible death. Was she still 
Seena or some subtle counterfeit? 

Nildoror sounds drifted out of 
the darkness. Gundersen heard 
another sound, too, closer by, a 
kind of stifled, snorting grunt that 
was wholly unfamiliar to him. It 
seemed like a cry of pain, though 
perhaps that was his imagination. 
Probably it was one of Seena’ s 
plateau beasts, snuffling around, 
searching for tasty roots in the 
garden. He heard it twice more 
and then not again. 

Time went by and Seena did 
not return. 

Then he saw the fifth moon 
float placidly into the sky, the 
size of a large silver coin and so 
bright that it dazzled the eye. 
About it the other four danced, two 
of them mere tiny dots, two slight- 
ly more imposing, and the shad- 
ows of the moonslight shattered 
and shattered again as planes of 
brilliance intersected. The heav- 
ens poured light upon the land in 



icy cascades. He gripped the rail 
of the veranda and silently begged 
the moons to hold their pattern. 
But the moons shifted. He knew 
that in another hour two of them 
would be gone and the magic 
would ebb. Where was Seena? 

“Edmund?” she said, from be- 
hind him. 

She was bare again and once 
more the slider was on her body, 
covering her loins, sending a long 
thin projection up to encompass 
only the nipple of each ripe 
breast. The light of the five moons 
made her tawny skin glitter and 
shine. Now she did not seem 
coarse to him — nor overly aggres- 
sive. She was perfect in her nudity 
and the moment was perfect and, 
unhesitatingly, he went to her. 
Quickly he dropped his clothing. 
He put his hands to her hips, 
touching the slider, and the 
strange creature understood, flow- 
ing obediently from her body, a 
chastity belt faithless to its task. 
She leaned toward him, her 
breasts swaying like fleshy bells 
and he kissed her, here, here, 
there, and they sank to the ve- 
randa floor, to the cold smooth 
stone. 

Her eyes remained open and 
colder than the floor, colder than 
the shifting light of the moons, 
even at the moment when he 
physically reasserted his love to 
her. 

But notfiing was cold about her 
embrace. Their bodies thrashed 
and tangled. Her skin was soft 
and her kiss hungry. And the years 
rolled away until it was the old 
time again, the happy time. At 



116 



GALAXY 




the highest moment he was dimly 
aware of that strange grunting 
sound once more. He clasped her 
fiercely and let his eyes close. 

Afterward they lay side by side, 
wordless in the moonslight until 
the brilliant fifth moon had com- 
pleted its voyage across the sky 
and the Night of the Five Moons 
had become as any other night. 

X 

H e slept by himself in one of 
the guest rooms on the top 
level of the station. Awakening un- 
expectedly early, he watched the 
sunrise coming over the gorge and 
went down to walk through the 
gardens, which still were glisten- 
ing with dew. He strolled as far 
as the edge of the river, looking 
for his nildoror companions. They 
were not to be seen. For a long 
time he stood beside the river 
watching the irresistible down- 
ward sweep of that immense vol- 
ume of water. 

He went back finally to the sta- 
tion. A robot met him on the first 
veranda and offered him break- 
fast. 

“I’ll wait for the woman,” 
Gundersen said. 

“She will not appear until 
much later in the morning.” 

“That’s odd. She never used to 
sleep that much.” 

“She is with the man,” the ro- 
bot volunteered. “She stays with 
him and comforts him at this 
hour.” 

“What man?” 

“The man Kurtz, her hus- 
band.” 



Gundersen said, amazed, 
“Kurtz is here at the station?” 

“He lies ill in his room.” 

She said he was away some- 
where. She didn't know when he'd 
be coming back. 

Gundersen said, “Was he in his 
room last night?” 

“He was.” 

“How long has he been back 
from his last journey away from 
here?” 

“One year at the solstice,” the 
robot said. “Perhaps you should 
consult the woman on these mat- 
ters. She will be with you after a 
while. Shall I bring breakfast?” 

“Yes,” Gundersen said. 

But Seena was not long in ar- 
riving. Ten minutes after he had 
finished the Juices, fruits and fried 
fish that the robot had brought 
him she appeared on the veranda, 
wearing a filmy white wrap. She 
seemed to have slept well. Her 
skin was clear and glowing. Her 
stride was vigorous. Her dark hair 
streamed buoyantly in the morn- 
ing breeze. But the curiously rigid 
and haunted expression of her 
eyes was unchanged. 

He said, “The robot told me 
not to wait breakfast for you. It 
said you wouldn’t be down for a 
long while.” 

“That’s all right. I’m not usu- 
ally down this early, it’s true. 
Come for a swim?” 

“In the river?” 

“No, silly.” She stripped away 
her wrap and ran down the steps 
into the garden. He sat frozen a 
moment, caught up in the 
rhythms of her swinging arms, her 
jouncing buttocks — then he fol- 



DOWNWARDTOTHE EARTH 



117 




lowed her. At a twist in the path 
that he had not noticed before she 
turned to the left and halted at a 
circular pool that appeared to 
have been punched out of the liv- 
ing rock on the river’s flank. As 
he reached it she launched herself 
in a fine, arching dive and ap- 
peared to hang suspended a mo- 
ment, floating above the dark 
water, her breasts drawn into a 
startling roundness by gravity’s 
pull. Then she went under. Before 
she came up for breath, Gunder- 
sen was naked and in the pool be- 
side her. Even in the mild climate 
the water was bitterly cold. 

“It comes from an under- 
ground spring,” she told him. 
“Isn’t it wonderful? Like a rite of 
purification.” 

A gray tendril rose from the 
water behind her, tipped with 
rubbery claws. Gundersen could 
find no words to warn her. He 
pointed with short stabbing mo- 
tions of two fingers and made hol- 
low chittering noises of horror. A 
second tendril spiraled out of the 
depths and hovered over her. 
Smiling, Seena turned, and 
seemed to fondle some large crea- 
ture; there was a thrashing in 
the water and then the tendrils 
slipped out of view. 

“What was that?” 

“The monster of the pool,” she 
said. “Ced Cullen brought it for 
me as a birthday present two 
years ago. It’s a plateau medusa. 
They live in lakes and sting 
things.” 

“How big is it?” 

“Oh, the size of a big octopus. 
I’d say. Very affectionate. I 



wanted Ced to catch me a mate 
for it but he didn’t get around to 
it before he went north. I suppose 
I’ll have to do it myself before 
long. The monster’s lonely.” She 
pulled herself out of the pool and 
sprawled out on a slab of smooth 
black rock to dry in the sun. Gun- 
dersen followed her. From this 
side of the pool, with the light 
penetrating the water at just the 
right angle, he was able to see a 
massive many-limbed shape far 
below. Seena’ s birthday present. 

He said, “Can you tell me 
where I can find Ced now?” 

“In the mist country.” 

“I know. That’s a big place. 
Any particular part?” 

S HE rolled over onto her back 
and flexed her knees. Sunlight 
made prisms of the droplets of 
water on her breasts. 

After a long silence she said, 
“Why do you want to find him so 
badly?” 

“I’m making a sentimental 
journey to see old friends. Ced 
and I were once very close. Isn’t 
that reason enough for me to go 
looking for him?” 

“It’s no reason to betray him, 
is it?” 

He stared at her. The fiercely 
frozen eyes now were closed — the 
heavy mounds of her breasts rose 
and fell slowly, serenely. 

“What do you mean by that?” 
he asked. 

“Didn’t the nildoror put you up 
to going after him?” 

“What kind of crazy talk is 
that?” he blurted, not sounding 



118 



GALAXY 




convincingly indignant even to him- 
self. 

“Why must you pretend?” she 
said, still speaking from within that 
impregnable core of total assur- 
ance. “The nildoror want him 
brought back from there. By treaty 
they’re prevented from going up 
there and getting him themselves. 
The sulidoror don’t feel like extra- 
diting him. Certainly none of the 
Earthmen living on this planet will 
fetch him. Now, as an outsider you 
need nildoror permission to enter 
the mist country and since you’re 
a stickler for the rules you prob- 
ably applied for such permission. 
And there’s no special reason why 
the nildoror should grant favors to 
you unless you agree to do some- 
thing for them in return. Q.E.D?” 

“Who told you all this?” 

“Believe me, I worked it all out 
for myself.” 

He propped his head on his hand 
and reached out admiringly with 
the other hand to touch her thigh. 
Her skin was dry and warm, now. 
He let his hand rest lightly — and 
then not so lightly — on the firm 
flesh. Seena showed no reaction. 

Softly he asked, “Is it too late 
for us to make a treaty?” 

“What kind?” 

“A non-aggression pact. We’ve 
been fencing since I got here. Let’s 
end the hostilities. I’ve been hiding 
things from you and you’ve been 
hiding things from me — and what 
good is it? Why can’t we simply 
help one another? We’re two hu- 
man beings on a world that’s much 
stranger and more dangerous than 
most people suspect. If we can’t 
supply a little mutual aid and com- 



fort, what are the ties of humanity 
worth?” 

She spoke quietly. 

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another! for the world, 
which seems 

To lie before us like a land of 
dreams. 

So various, so beautiful, so new. 

The words of the old poem 
flowed up from the well of his 
memory. His voice cut in. 

Hath really neither joy, nor 
love, nor light. 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor 
help for pain; 

And we are here as on a dark- 
ling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of 
struggle and flight 

Where — where. . . . 

Where ignorant armies clash 
by night. 

She finished it for him. 

“Yes. How like you it is, Ed- 
mund, to fumble your lines just at 
the crucial moment, just at the 
final climax.” 

“Then there’s to be no non-ag- 
gression pact?” 

“I’m sorry. 1 shouldn’t have said 
that.” She turned toward him, took 
his hand from her thigh, pressed it 
tenderly between her breasts, 
raised it to brush her lips against it. 
“All right, we’ve been playing little 
games. They’re over and now we’ll 
speak only truth. But you go first. 
Did the nildoror ask you to bring 
Ced out of the mist country?” 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



119 




“Yes,” Gundersen said. “It was 
the condition of my entry.” 

“And you promised you’d do it?” 
“I made certain reservations and 
qualifications, Seena. If he won’t 
go willingly I’m not bound by hon- 
or to force him. But I do have to 
find him. That much I’ve pledged. 
So I ask you again to tell me where 
I should look.” 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I have 
no idea.” 

“Is this the truth?” 

“The truth,” she said and for a 
moment the harshness was gone 
from her eyes. 

“Can you tell me at least why 
he fled — why they want him so 
eagerly.” 

S HE said, “About a year ago, he 
went down into the central pla- 
teau on one of his regular col- 
lecting trips. He was planning to 
get me another medusa, he said. 
Most of the time I went with him 
into the plateau but this time 
Kurtz was ill and I had to stay be- 
hind. Ced went to a part of the pla- 
teau we had never visited before. 
He found a group of nildoror tak- 
ing part in some kind of religious 
ceremony. He stumbled right into 
them and evidently he profaned 
the ritual.” 

“Rebirth?” Gundersen asked. 
“No, they do rebirth only in the 
mist country. This was something 
else, something almost as serious, 
it seems. The nildoror were furi- 
ous. Ced barely escaped alive. He 
came back here and said he was in 
great trouble — that the nildoror 
wanted him, that he had com- 
mitted some sort of sacrilege and 



had to take sanctuary. Then he 
went north, with a posse of nildor- 
or chasing him right to the border. 
I haven’t heard anything since. 
And that’s all I can tell you.” 

“You haven’t told me what sort 
of sacrilege he committed,” Gun- 
dersen pointed out. 

“I don’t know it. I don’t know 
what kind of ritual it was, or what 
he did to interrupt it. I’ve told you 
only as much as he told me. Will 
you believe that?” 

“I’ll believe it,” he said. He 
smiled. “Now let’s play another 
game and this time I’ll take the 
lead. Last night you told me that 
Kurtz was off on a trip, that you 
hadn’t seen him for a long time and 
didn’t know when he’d be back. 
You also said he’d been sick — but 
you brushed over that pretty 
quickly. This morning the robot 
who brought me breakfast said that 
you’d be late coming down because 
Kurtz was ill and you were with him 
in his room, as you were every 
morning at this time. Robots don’t 
ordinarily lie.” 

“The robot wasn’t lying. I was.” 
“Why?” 

“To shield Kurtz from you,” 
Seena said. “He’s in bad shape and 
I don’t want him to be disturbed. 
And I knew that if I told you he 
was here, you’d want to see him. 
He isn’t strong enough for visitors. 
It was an innocent lie, Edmund.” 
“What’s wrong with him?” 

“We aren’t sure. You know, 
there isn’t much medical service 
left on this planet. I suppose I 
could describe his disease as a kind 
of cancer. Only cancer isn’t what 
he has.” 



120 



GALAXY 




“Can you describe the symp- 
toms?” 

“What’s the use? His body began 
to change. He became something 
strange and ugly and frightening 
and you don’t need to know the de- 
tails. If you thought that what had 
happened to Dykstra and Pauleen 
was horrible — you’d be rocked to 
your roots by Kurtz. But I won’t let 
you see him. It’s as much to shield 
you from him as the other way 
around. You’ll be better off not 
seeing him.” Seena sat up cross- 
legged on the rock and began to 
untangle the wet, snarled strands 
of her hair. Gundersen thought he 
had never seen her looking as 
beautiful as she looked right at this 
moment, clothed only in alien sun- 
light, her flesh taut and ripe and 
glowing, her body supple, full- 
blown, mature. And the stony 
fierceness of her eyes, the one 
jarring discordancy? Had that 
come from viewing, each morn- 
ing, the horror that Kurtz now 
was? She added after a long while: 
“Kurtz is being punished for his 
sins.” 

“Do you really believe that?” 

“I do,” she said. “I believe that 
there are such things as sins and 
that there is retribution for sin.” 

“And that an old man with a 
white beard is up there in the sky, 
keeping score on everyone, running 
the show, tallying up an adultery 
here, a lie there, a spot of gluttony, 
a little pride?” 

“I have no idea who runs the 
show,” said Seeni. “I’m not even 
sure that anyone does. Don’t mis- 
lead yourself, Edmund — I’m not 
trying to import medieval theology 



to Belzagor. I won’t give you the 
Father, the Son and the Holy 
Ghost and say that all over the 
universe certain fundamental 
principles hold true. I simply say 
that here on Belzagor we live in 
the presence of certain moral abso- 
lutes, native to this planet. And if 
a stranger comes to Belzagor and 
transgresses against those abso- 
lutes he’ll regret it. This world is 
not ours, never was, never will be, 
and we who live here are in a con- 
stant state of peril, because we 
don’t understand the basic rules.” 

“What sins did Kurtz commit?” 

“It would take me all morning to 
name them,” she said. “Some 
were sins against the nildoror and 
some were sins against his own 
spirit.” 

“We all committed sins against 
the nildoror,” Gundersen said. 

“In a sense, yes. We were proud 
and foolish and we failed to see 
them for what they were — and we 
used them unkindly. That’s a sin, 
yes — a sin that our ancestors com- 
mitted all over Earth long before 
we went into space. But Kurtz had 
a greater capacity for sin than the 
rest of us because he was a greater 
man. Angels have farther to fall 
— once they fall.” 

“What did Kurtz do to the nil- 
doror? Kill them? Dissect them? 
Whip them?” 

“Those are sins against their 
bodies,” said Seena. “He did 
worse.” 

“Tell me.” 

“Do you know what used to go 
on at the serpent station, south of 
the spaceport?” 

“I was there for a few weeks 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



121 




with Kurtz and Salamone,” Gun- 
dersen said. “Long ago — when I 
was very new here, when you were 
still a child on Earth. I watched 
the two of them call serpents out 
of the jungle, milk the raw venom 
from them and give the venom to 
nildoror to drink. And drink the 
venom themselves.” 

“And what happened then?” 

H e shook his head and con- 
fessed, “I’ve never been able to 
understand it. When I tried it with 
them, I had the illusion that the 
three of us were turning into nil- 
doror. And that three nildoror had 
turned into us. 1 had a trunk, four 
legs, tusks, spines. Everything 
looked different — I was seeing 
through nildoror eyes. Then it 
ended and I was in my own body 
again. I felt a terrible rush of guilt, 
of shame. I had no way of know- 
ing whether it had been a real 
bodily metamorphosis or just hal- 
lucination.” 

“It was hallucination,” Seena 
told him. “The venom opened your 
mind, your soul, and enabled you 
to enter the nildor consciousness, 
at the same time that the nildor was 
entering yours. For a little while 
that nildor thought he was Ed- 
mund Gundersen. Such a dream is 
great ecstasy to a nildor.” 

“Is this Kurtz’ sin, then? To give 
ecstasy to nildoror?” 

“The serpent venom,” Seena 
said, “is also used in the rebirth 
ceremony. What you and Kurtz 
and Salamone were doing down 
there in the jungle was going 
through a mild — very mild — ver- 
sion of rebirth. And so were the 



nildoror. But it was blasphemous 
rebirth for them for many rea- 
sons. First, because it was held in 
the wrong place. Second, because 
it was done without the proper 
rituals. Third, because the cele- 
brants who guided the nildoror 
were men, not sulidoror — and so 
the entire thing became a wicked 
parody of the most sacred ritual 
this planet has. By giving those nil- 
doror the venom Kurtz was tempt- 
ing them to dabble in something 
diabolical — literally diabolical. 
Few nildoror can resist that temp- 
tation. He found pleasure in the act 
— both in the hallucinations that 
the venom gave him and in the 
tempting of the nildoror. I think he 
enjoyed the tempting even more 
than the hallucinations and that 
was his worst sin. Through it he 
led innocent nildoror into what 
passes for damnation on this plan- 
et. In twenty years on Belzagor he 
inveigled hundreds, perhaps thou- 
sands, of nildoror into sharing a 
bowl of venom with him. Finally 
his presence became intolerable 
and his own hunger for evil became 
the source of his destruction. And 
now he lies upstairs, neither living 
nor dead, no longer a danger to 
anything on Belzagor.” She got to 
her feet, stretched voluptuously 
and beckoned to him. “Let’s go 
back to the station now.” 

As though this were time’s first 
dawn they walked naked through 
the garden, close together, the 
warmth of the sun and the warmth 
of her body stirring him and rais- 
ing a fever in him. Twice he con- 
sidered pulling her to the ground 
and loving her amidst these alien 



122 



GALAXY 




shrubs. Twice he held back, not 
knowing why. When they were a 
dozen meters from the house he 
felt desire climb again and turned 
to her and put his hand on her 
breast. 

She said, “Tell me one more 
thing — first.” 

“If I can.” 

“Why have you come back to 
Belzagor? Really. What draws you 
to the mist country?” 

He said, “If you believe in sin 
you must believe in the possibility 
of redemption from sin.” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, then — I, too, have a sin 
on my conscience. Perhaps not as 
grave a sin as the sins of Kurtz but 
enough to trouble me. I’ve come 
back here as an act of expiation.” 
“How have you sinned?” 

“I sinned against the nildoror in 
the ordinary Earthman way, by col- 
laborating in their enslavement, by 
patronizing them, by failing to 
credit their intelligence and their 
complexity. In particular I sinned 
by preventing seven nildoror from 
reaching rebirth on time. Do you 
remember? When the Monroe 
dam broke I commandeered those 
pilgrims for a labor detail. I used a 
fusion torch to make them obey 
and, on my account, they missed 
rebirth. I didn’t know that if they 
were late for rebirth they’d lose 
their turn — and if I had known it 
I wouldn’t have thought it mat- 
tered. Sin within sin within sin. I 
left here feeling, stained. Those 
seven nildoror bothered me in my 
dreams. I realized thaf I had to 
come back and try to purify my- 
self.” 



“What kind of expiation do you 
have in mind?” she asked. 

His eyes had difficulty meeting 
hers. He lowered them but that was 
worse — her nakedness unnerved 
him even more as they stood to- 
gether in the sunlight outside the 
station. He forced his glance up 
again. 

He said, “I’m determined to 
find out what rebirth is and to take 
part in it. I’m going to offer myself 
to the sulidoror as a candidate.” 
“No.” 

“Seena, what’s wrong? You — ” 
She trembled. Her cheeks were 
blazing and the rush of scarlet 
spread even to her breasts. She bit 
her lip, spun away from him,, 
turned back. 

“What you’re planning is insan- 
ity,” she said. “Rebirth isn’t some- 
thing for Earthmen. Why do you 
think you can possibly expiate any- 
thing by getting yourself mixed up 
in an alien religion — by surrender- 
ing yourself to a process none of us 
knows anything about, by — ” 

“I have to see this through, 
Seena.” 

“Don’t be crazy.” 

“It’s an obsession. I can’t stop. I 
owe this planet a life and I’m here 
to pay it. I have to go — regardless 
of the consequences.” 

She said, “Come inside the sta- 
tion with me — ” her voice flat, 
mechanical, empty. 

“Why?” 

“Come inside.” 

He followed her in silently. She 
led him to the middle level of the 
building and into a corridor 
blocked by one of her robot guard- 
ians. At a nod from her the robot 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



123 




stepped aside. Outside a room at 
the rear she paused and put her 
hand to the door’s scanner. The 
door rolled back. Seena gestured 
to him to walk in with her. 

He heard the grunting, snorting 
sound that he had heard the night 
before and now there was no doubt 
in his mind that it had been a throt- 
tled cry of terrible pain. 

“This is the room where Kurtz 
spends his time,” Seena said. She 
drew a curtain that had divided 
the room. “And this is Kurtz.” 

“It isn’t possible,” Gundersen 
murmured. “How — how — ” 

“How did he get that way?” 
“Yes.” 

“As he grew older he began to 
feel remorse for the crimes he had 
committed. He suffered great guilt 
and last year he resolved to un- 
dertake an act of expiation. He de- 
cided to travel to the mist country 
and undergo rebirth. This is what 
they brought back to me. This is 
what a human being looks like, Ed- 
mund, when he’s undergone re- 
birth.” 

XI 

W HAT Gundersen beheld was 
apparently human. Probably 
it had once been Jeff Kurtz. The 
absurd body length was surely 
Kurtzlike, although the figure in 
the bed seemed to be a man and 
a half long — as if an extra section 
of vertebrae and perhaps a sec- 
ond pair of femurs had been 
spliced in. The skull was plainly 
Kurtz, too — mighty white dome, 
jutting, ridged brow. The ridges 
were even more prominent than 



Gundersen remembered. They rose 
above Kurtz’ closed eyes like bar- 
ricades guarding against some in- 
vasion from above. But the thick 
black brows were gone. So were 
the lush, almost feminine eye- 
lashes. 

Below the forehead the faee was 
unrecognizable. 

It was as if everything had been 
heated in a crucible and allowed to 
melt and run. Kurtz’ fine, high- 
bridged nose was now a rubbery 
smear, so snoutlike that Gunder- 
sen was jolted by its resemblance 
to a sulidor’s. His wide mouth had 
grown slack — pendulous lips 
drooped open, revealing toothless 
gums. His chin sloped back like a 
pithecanthropoid’s. Kurtz’ cheek- 
bones were flat and broad, wholly 
altering the planes of his face. 

Seena drew the coverlet down to 
display the rest. The body in the 
bed was utterly hairless — a long, 
boiled-looking pink thing like a 
giant slug. All superfluous flesh 
was gone and the skin lay like a 
shroud over plainly visible ribs and 
muscles. The proportions of the 
body were wrong. Kurtz’ waist 
was an impossibly great distanee 
from his chest and his legs, though 
long, were not nearly as long as 
they should have been. His ankles 
seemed to crowd his knees. His 
toes had fused so that his feet ter- 
minated in bestial pads. Perhaps 
by way of compensation his fingers 
had added extra joints and were 
great spidery things that flexed 
and clenched in irregular rhythms. 
The attachment of his arms to his 
torso appeared strange, though it 
(Please turn to page 146} 



124 



GALAXY 





AFTER THEY TOOK 
THE PANAMA CANAL 



O N TUESDAY they took the 
Panama Canal. On Wednesday 
Myra went in to work although 
nobody’s mind was on work. 
Wednesday night Myra wrote to 
George: 



George’s reply came a week lat- 
er. He repeated a former state- 
ment: he loved a busty black- 
haired girl whose name was not 
Myra. So that was that. 

The gas the invaders used af- 
fected only the older people. My- 
ra had been afraid they might use 
it on all the men as well. But they 
took only the old. Myra was not 



Why don’t we get married 
now? Or at least you come 
up here . . . 



125 




allowed transit back to her town 
in Vermont. The burials were held 
within two days and were run 
without emotion and without pri- 
vate graves. The bodies were al- 
lotted a certain amount of desig- 
nated area — one body for such 
and such fraction of an acre. It 
was explained that decomposition 
in the shallow graves would help 
future crops in the rocky soil. Un- 
fortunately a heavy rain fell right 
after the burials. 

The new school administrator 
handed out the outlines which 
had been expected. The new lan- 
guage would not be required in 
all grades for a year. The history 
was required immediately. Myra’s 
world history course on the ninth- 
grade level was changed into a 
civics study and all her pupils 
were required to learn by heart 
the tenets of the new law. Her 
tenth-grade American history 
course became Historical Images. 
The invaders were apparently 
making no attempt to talk against 
the old ideas but merely to wipe 
them off the slate, to start with 
clear positive tenets. No mention 
was to be made of any of the for- 
mer subjects. None was. 

The system to enforce this ar- 
rangement was twofold. Students 
must report on teachers and 
teachers on students. At first 
there were exchanges of secret ex- 
pressions, imparting more of a 
sensation of guilt rather than 
rage. These decreased. 



The first revolt was punished 
by the gassing of the intelligent 
people of New York. This oc- 
curred at midday in the middle of 
the tenth week. I.Q.’s of under a 
hundred were not touched. Every- 
one else was. Myra had had 
doubts about George’s I.Q. but 
she did not think it went that low. 
But she had a strong feeling, per- 
haps induced by desire only, that 
George had been out of the city. 
His periodical often sent him 
away on stories and she knew 
that since his field was cultural 
coverage it was possible that he 
had been at the newly opened 
Philadelphia exposition of the 
conqueror’s art. When he and 
Myra had first been in love they 
had experienced a high degree of 
success in the transference of 
ideas both during the day and by 
the aid of dreams. Neither of 
them had felt this was an extra- 
ordinary phenomenon — they 
thought about each other most of 
the time and they could tell by 
each other’s presence just what 
was on the other’s mind. 

The days of rape were orderly 
and controlled. But they did not 
end. Each of the newly stationed 
conquerors in the town — there 
were only fourteen in Greenwich 
— was issued a cohabitation card. 
The conquerors were all intelli- 
gent and were allowed to breed 
with intelligent women only. All 
the women who had gone to col- 
lege and most of the high-school 



126 



GALAXY 




graduates had been test,ed early 
and their records were on file. No 
chance remained of slanting a test 
toward low grades. Besides, one 
would not do that anyway because 
of the work allotments. 

The tranquilizing gas was 
spread every Monday morning. 
This had become a steady occur- 
rence and the doses were heavy at 
the beginning — so heavy, in fact, 
that Myra had little recollection 
of the first orderly calls of her 
three allotted administrators. Al- 
most fifty women in Greenwich 
had been passed as child carriers 
for the fourteen men and each 
man was assigned to three wom- 
en. Myra could expect one a week 
in rotation. 

Two of hers were tall and 
looked quite healthy and very 
much alike. The third was taller 
still but quite thin and not quite 
so robust. He demanded little of 
her and looked and seemed dis- 
tracted much of the time. Often 
he quit his assignment halfway 
through and demanded nothing 
at all. The others were perfunctory 
and displayed pleasure without 
emotion. 

A sort of tranquilizing chemical 
was added to the food as well. 
Unfortunately it betrayed a urine- 
like taste which soon pervaded all 
of what Myra ate. 

Had Myra had many friends 
before the invasion she might 
have found a little solace in com- 
panionship. Friendships were al- 



lowed to continue — meetings at 
the homes of one’s friends were 
permitted as long as one was at 
home on the nights when services 
were demanded. But Myra lived 
in Greenwich only a short time 
and had spent most of that think- 
ing of George. She still spent most 
of her time thinking of George 
and once in a while tried to imag- 
ine what she could do against the 
invasion. But the drugs were used 
so heavily that she could not con- 
centrate. 

Her mind kept going back to 
the day when everyone had be- 
come sure of what had happened. 
But her sureness had been hind- 
sight. She had always been afraid 
of the dark and had slept with the 
radio on all her days at Green- 
wich. The radio had played teen- 
age tunes most of the afternoon. 
The news accounts had consisted 
of singing weather reports. There 
had, in fact, been no mention at 
all of what was happening. 

“So we went out by Musack, 
after all,” was Myra’s main reac- 
tion to the day. 

^WO years after they took the 

Panama Canal the tranquiliz- 
ing dose had been lowered. The 
work level had been raised and 
the food quota had been cut in 
half. But Myra, being pregnant, 
was allowed more food than any- 
one else. She had, furthermore, 
learned her fate — she would be 
allowed to bear two children and 



AFTER THEY TOOK THE PANAMA CANAL 



127 




care for them until each was five 
and then she would either be 
shipped to a smaller population 
area to drudgery or executed. The 
first would come about only if 
she could convince the govern- 
ment of her loyalty. Very few were 
allowed this chance — the govern- 
ment had people of its own 
trained from a much younger age. 
Once she had borne two intelli- 
gent children, since she was a 
member of the generation that re- 
membered, her productiveness 
would drop to teaching courses in 
civics and historical myth. And in 
the new children’s camps both 
chores were handled by machines. 

She had discovered her fate 
from the thin administrator whose 
child she perhaps bore. She hoped 
the child was his but, of course, 
she could not be sure. He and 
she spoke to each other less now 
than they had at first. The edict 
on speaking the conqueror’s lan- 
guage had been passed a year ago 
and she had not become too pro- 
ficient. When the two others came 
to her bed she cared so little for 
their presence that she did much 
of her serious thinking at that 
time. The administrators brought 
small servings of whiskey when 
they came on the theory that bet- 
ter children would result. The 
whiskey cut the haze in Myra’s 
mind and led her to a passion 
of thought. When the thin one 
came she and he solemnly drank 
the allotment and then solemnly 



went to bed. The man’s actions be- 
trayed no passion whatsoever but 
he did exhibit a great tenderness 
— although he never spoke at such 
moments. 

He would stroke her hair, some- 
thing even George had never done. 
He would trace the features of her 
face with his fingers and he would 
turn her face to his and stare into 
her eyes, so that Myra often felt 
she was on the verge of being hyp- 
notized, although she knew that to 
mesmerize her was not his inten- 
tion. His eyes were gray, almost 
whitish at times, and very trans- 
parent in the colored area when 
she viewed him from the side. His 
hands and feet were long. Myra 
began to wonder if she loved him. 
The idea presented such absurd 
angles that she amused herself 
with this reverie. 

Temptation had visited her be- 
fore she became pregnant. During 
the second year of the invasion she 
had begun to accuse herself. Why 
did she not rebel? She could par- 
tially forgive the women of the 
town when she saw them in the 
streets with their children. Their 
first interest was rightly the care 
of those children — but why, really, 
since they would be sent away? 

Nevertheless, Myra felt that she 
had perhaps a special responsibil- 
ity. She had no family to care for 
and she had been educated. 

In the spring she thought she 
would try to get hold of some kind 
of suicide potion. She would get up 



128 



GALAXY 




early in the morning and write a 
lot of signs with the magic marker 
she would bring home from school. 
DO NOT FORGET— ARISE— 
DEFEND — FIGHT were words 
she would write on pieces of paper 
she would strew along the street 
and, under one enormous sign tied 
to a stake, she would administer 
the potion to herself at dawn. But 
she did not want those who heeded 
her exhortations to be killed. Nor 
could she see how any revolt at 
all would have any effect. The 
chemical weapons of America had 
been long since taken over — be- 
sides, who knew how to work 
them? And without them there 
was no hope. Brute force was out 
of the question. 

The burning of the books took 
place at this point in her life and 
here Myra did exhibit courage 
and here she did work according 
to plan. She had suspected from 
the beginning of the invasion that 
a book-burning would take place 
sooner or later. When less drugged 
moments gave her any lucidity she 
planned what books she would 
save and where she would hide 
them. The move was a dangerous 
one. Her natural reaction was to 
pick Shakespeare, the Bible, a 
book on Einstein, Greek plays, a 
guide to western art and an an- 
thology of English and American 
poetry. Then she began to ques- 
tion each book. 

That inner debate went on for 
months. The Greek plays were 



dropped easily from her selections 
— she got a syllabus of the hold- 
ings of the new library and they 
were listed as evidently not dan- 
gerous. She had doubts about the 
Bible — rational action was needed 
now more than mysticism. Still it 
was the oldest continuous histori- 
cal record she could think of and 
that would be important. How 
were people to find out later that 
life had not always been like this? 
Was Shakespeare really good 
enough to save? Or was she taking 
him on hearsay? The Einstein 
book? She dumped that on the 
theory that anyone being able to 
put the theories into use would be 
a member of the government and 
thus have access to parallel ma- 
terial. Besides, she did not under- 
stand it. She retained the art book 
and the poetry. 

But the book-burning day was 
announced sooner than she had 
anticipated. She had by then fig- 
ured out only one hiding place. 
She had decided she had better 
have places that would look as if 
the books had been accidentally 
overlooked in case she were dis- 
covered. But she could only think 
of one like that and she used it 
for her volume of Shakespeare, 
slipping it under the seat of the 
stuffed chair in her living room. 
She put the art book in an empty 
sugar box in her kitchen cabinet 
and the Bible in the mechanical 
sweeper. 

That made three books and she 



AFTER THEYTOOK THE PANAMA CANAL 



129 




was sure of none. The rest would 
have to go. 

DUT that night when the thin 
"administrator came he sat in 
the stuffed chair and asked for a 
cup of coffee. Why hadn’t she re- 
membered that that was often his 
custom? He did not seem to notice 
the presence of the book, however. 

He called for her to come and 
sit on his lap after he had finished 
his coffee. He held her hand that 
night — he had never held her 
hand so gently. She rested her 
arm on the arm of the chair and 
looked down at him. They spoke 
slowly in the new language. He 
covered her knee with his other 
hand. 

“I love to look at your hair be- 
cause it is clean and soft,” he 
said. 

She had no reply. 

“You must grow your hair long- 
er so it will wave and catch in the 
light.” 

“All right.” 

“You look much like my sis- 
ter.” 

“Oh.” 

Then he put his head on her 
breast and dozed. After ten min- 
utes she tried to move but he held 
her there. After half an hour he 
opened his eyes. 

“You may get up.” 

She stood up and went to get 
his coat. 

When she returned he held the 
Shakespeare book in his hand. He 



put it into his coat pocket, kissed 
her forehead and left. 

Now she had the Bible and the 
art book. She had not been able 
to find a place for the poetry book. 

Then the passion which was to 
govern her until the birth of her 
child took hold. She developed a 
great remorse for the loss of her 
Shakespeare. She came to feel ob- 
ligated to act. She came to feel 
guilty. She must restore Shake- 
speare to the world. 

But she could not remember the 
plays. At night, when she was free, 
she worked with a pen and scrap 
paper. She wrote what she remem- 
bered about the quality of mercy 
not being strained. But that was 
about all she remembered of 
mercy’s not being strained. 

Cry havoc and let loose the dogs 
of war . . . 

That was more to the point but 
too late. So she took to noting 
down the plots of the plays. 

MacBeth: a man and his wife, 
mostly his wife, kill 
someone rich and 
powerful but after 
they have killed, they 
feel so bad they can’t 
do anything else. And 
someone comes at 
them disguised in a 
forest. 

Hamlet: a prince’s father was 

murdered and he is 
supposed to handle 
the revenge on the 



130 



GALAXY 




new king who did it, 
but he does not quite 
get to the point and 
kills everybody else 
instead. 

Tempest: a wise, old, powerful, 
kind man fixes up 
what he has control 
over and guides it to- 
ward good and then 
knows his time is up 
and does himself in. 

But these sketches did not satis- 
fy her. She felt perhaps she had 
not understood all of what must 
have been meant in the plays and 
developed an even more gnawing 
appetite for the lost book. She be- 
gan long exegeses on the scratch 
paper. The pen was thin and ill- 
working and the paper blotched 
and she went on night after night 
elaborating on the slender themes 
she could remember. Her frustra- 
tion grew and her anger grew and 
her guilt grew and in the morning 
when she awoke with a great sense 
of loss and a great vagueness as to 
just what the loss was she named it 
— the book that her thin conquer- 
or lover had taken away. 

One morning the sense of loss 
overcame her even more strongly. 
She cried out loud when she awoke 
and she did not feel well through- 
out her body. She never missed a 
day of the school and she was 
frightened to report an absence 
from her work schedule. She went 
to her classes but the nurse sent 



her to the clinic, where she was 
told she was pregnant. She worked 
into the eigth month. 

H er knowledge of her pregnancy 
seemed to relieve the urgency of 
what she felt about the lost book. 
Though she grew melancholy and 
sentimental over the child and 
over the book, she no longer had 
energy for her scratchings in the 
night. 

She looked at the slow bulge in 
her stomach, ran her hands over 
and around it and shook down the 
hair she had let grow long. It 
caught more light that it used to. 
She washed her body and her face 
more often than usual and specu- 
lated seriously on the father of the 
child. He was probably the second 
of the two men who seemed so 
alike and who spoke to her in the 
ideology of the government. But 
could she be pregnant by her thin 
lover? She would like his child. 
She had told him of its coming 
before she told the others. 

“No,” he said. 

He did not think the child was 
his. Didn’t she remember? They 
had not slept together that week at 
all. Or those weeks. They had eat- 
en and rested but there had been 
no intimacy. It was strange that 
she had forgotten — but she had. 
And now: it was convenient for 
her not to remember. 

She was sorry he did not want 
to claim fatherhood of her child. 
But he did not and, as the time 



AFTER THEY TOOK THE PANAMA CANAL 



131 




grew nearer, she began to fancy 
that perhaps it was George’s, from 
some sperm of years before that 
had only now yeasted or whatever 
sperm did. She would call the 
child George. She thought and 
thought of George and when she 
was allowed to leave work in her 
last month she thought more and 
more of him, remembering and 
wondering. Had he been killed in 
the New York punishment? No, 
she was certain of that by now. He 
was still alive and she felt it. Each 
day she felt it more. Had he capit- 
ulated to the enemy? No doubt. 
George was a little like that. But 
then, one could say she had capit- 
ulated too. One met few heroes 
these days. In fact, she could not 
recall one. Was he living with the 
other girl? No doubt. It didn’t 
matter. He would only take an- 
other girl because he could not 
get to Myra. He should have some 
comfort. 

He will come back. I will see 
him one day. / will see . . . 

Once during the night she dialed 
George’s old number but she woke 
up someone named Harry who was 
terribly mad and had never heard 
of George. Then the baby came 
and they did not give her any an- 
esthesia because of bad effects it 
might have on the child and she 
did not care for about eight hours 
if she lived or died and it was 
worse than she had ever imagined. 

When they brought the child to 
her there was something about it 



she definitely did not like. She 
knew then that it was not George’s. 
It was not even her thin conquer- 
or-lover's baby. It was the exact 
image of both of her other two 
males. And it hurt her terribly 
when it fed. 

She liked it a little better after 
she got it home. But most of all 
she liked the freedom it gave her 
from the two fathers, but she 
missed seeing her thin lover once 
a week. Strange that she did not 
know any of her lovers’ names — 
perhaps they had none. She had 
nothing to do for six weeks but 
care for the child. Her meals were 
brought in to her for a while and 
her extra work was done. She be- 
came almost gay. To entertain her- 
self and to keep away soberer 
thoughts, she took the art book 
out of the sugar box and began to 
draw. She used a few basic food 
stuffs to make weak water color 
paints and she made a paint brush 
from her own hair. Then she got 
a little carried away and made six 
paint brushes, thin ones and thick 
ones, and began to paint directly 
on the walls. 

First she was still caught up in 
the spirit of the Shakespeare cru- 
sade and she tried to copy over 
her living room walls some of the 
works of the masters. But these 
came out poorly. The DaVinci Last 
Supper merely faded into the pa- 
per over the couch and she could 
not reproduce the perfection of the 
lines or come anywhere near the 



132 



GALAXY 




depth of colors of any of the paint- 
ings in the Renaissance section of 
the book. Next she tried to study 
the human body and made black 
outlines of her hands and feet on 
the white wood of the doorway but 
they were not too well executed. 
She turned finally to wild and 
loose depictions of animals she re- 
membered from childhood walks 
in the woods. These she put in her 
bedroom when she ran out of liv- 
ing room space. She did rather 
free-expression sketches of cows 
she had seen in pastures of her 
childhood, all turning to look at 
you as you pass on the dirt road. 
She drew quick, running horses 
under winter trees and spare suns. 
She drew a fat elephant for the 
baby along with some giraffes and 
cats. 

She worked on the walls of her 
bedroom late at night by low light. 
Only a soft glow illumined her 
work, a glow like that at sunset 
just inside the opening of a cave. 
Seeing it, she could sleep. 

But as the child grew she be- 
came vexed at her paintings. She 
was irritated at the mess in the 
living room and enjoyed only at 
certain times of day the animals in 
her bedroom. She stopped combing 
her hair and washing and she grew 
frantic with the baby. She would 
coax him and tickle him, tickle 
him too much, too long, forcing 
him to laugh more than he wanted 
to. Shaking him and even at times 
pulling up the corners of his 



mouth into an artificial smile. She 
grew to hate the child. 

He was, after all, the first mark 
against her. Another child plus 
five years and then they would kill 
her. Or send her to a labor camp 
and she could no longer stand 
to wash her little daily rotation of 
dishes. 

A fter six weeks, the govern- 
ment let the men come back. 
They were to employ contracep- 
tion for two years but they were to 
be allowed to satisfy their desires 
during that time. And for the sake 
of order all fourteen stayed with 
the same women. 

Each of the healthy administra- 
tors thought of the baby as his 
own. Her tall, thin lover — she took 
to calling him Tall in her mind be- 
cause it actually described him 
better to her than Thin, although 
he was both — patted the baby on 
the head but he did not seem to 
care for it very much. 

How nice it was to see him. 
Myra felt warm in his presence. 
She was ashamed of her shaggy 
hair and her unwashed face. 

“Myra,” he said as he came in 
through the door. 

He smothered her in his arms, 
against his chest, and held her 
there and laughed at her. He took 
the whiskey from his coat pocket 
and went into the kitchen to fix 
drinks for them. 

“Ah, Myra,” he said and kissed 
her and they made love before 



AFTER THEY TOOK THE PANAMA CANAL 



133 




they drank and for the first time 
Myra thought to herself, We are 
making love — that is what we are 
doing. 

Tall was gay afterwards and 
would not let her dress but took 
her into the kitchen and washed 
her with a dish towel and brushed 
her hair and then they drank. 

“Dance,” he said and he poured 
her another glass of whiskey. 

They sat in the bedroom. Tall 
turned off the light and lit a can- 
dle he had brought her during the 
winter. The light flickered on the 
walls and Tall sang a strange, 
alien song and beat out the tune 
on the bed and then on the walls. 
She had no clue to the real mean- 
ing of the words — he knew only 
the elementals of his tongue. 

“Dance.” 

And Myra danced under the 
walls and for the first time in years 
felt joy in her feet and in her hands 
and in the wild hair that caught 
her heels on the floor and twisted 
and sang and laughed as she sang 
and called Tail’s name and 
George’s name and — once — the 
name of God. 

She began to weep as she 
danced but the dance grew even 
longer then. She twisted her hands 
and wept and Tall stopped singing 
and only watched and grew sad 
and wept as well. Finally she fell 
on the bed and Tall picked her up 
and showed her her own face in 
the mirror on her wall and his face 
beside it. Then he picked up a 



paint brush that was made from 
Myra’s hair and dipped it in a col- 
or and while they both looked in 
the mirror, he traced the outlines 
of their faces there right on the 
surface of the mirror and under- 
neath he wrote their names and 
then they made love again but the 
baby cried and soon they fed it. 

Myra brought up George and 
taught him to speak the new ton- 
gue and tried to love him but she 
could not. She set him tasks that 
were too hard for him to do in 
order to trick him and he became 
an unhappy child. They both be- 
came sick in an epidemic of flu 
and often in the night, when he 
cried, Myra did not tend to him, 
partly because she was sick and 
partly because she did not want to. 
She recovered from the flu but the 
child did not. He was taken to the 
clinic and died there. The two men 
who might have been his father 
were not kind to her after that. 
They struck her and forced her 
more than was comfortable. But 
she was glad the child had died. 
She felt she had accomplished 
something. 

The child died in its third year. 
But he still counted against Myra. 
There would be only one more. 
One more child — plus five years. 

Myra went back to work at the 
school. Usually she thought about 
nothing. When she thought it was 
about Tall. She prayed now and 
then. She prayed to Pan and Ven- 
us and God and Jehovah and 



134 



GALAXY 




Brahma and even the serpent in 
the garden that the next child 
would be Tail’s. 

Ten months after the first child 
died she felt once again that she 
might be pregnant. She told Tall 
immediately and did not tell the 
others. 

“Yes,” he said. He thought it 
was his this time. He remembered, 
yes, he remembered a time when 
he had felt for sure there would be 
a child. They were happy and 
gentle. 

When Tall came the next week 
he announced that he would not 
come again. He was asking the 
administration for a new woman, 
since he found this one unproduc- 
tive and cold. 

“Tall!” 

He asked for her trust. He asked 
for her love, he spoke against the 
government. He said that he 
would stay alive until she was tak- 
en for execution but that he 
planned a kind of espionage and 
he did not want his child or her to 
feel the consequences of associa- 
tion with him. “Feel” was the word 
he used in his strange tongue, 
which had no word for “suffer.” 

He would not explain. He 
would give no details. But he knew 
his mind. They would meet every 
Friday in the town square at three 
and pass each other on the street, 
but they would not speak. 

She must bring up the child as 
rapidly as she could. She must 
learn to speak to it before it was 



sent away. She must tell the child 
of its father. 

H e kissed her on the fore- 
head. He went out. Myra took 
the sheets from the bed and 
burned them in the sink and 
braided her hair around her head 
and did not unbraid it until the 
child was born. 

He was a long thin child with 
gray eyes that looked transparent 
when she viewed him from the side 
but she did not dare to name him 
Yuri. She took down her hair and 
washed it and braided it and then 
she took the razor and cut the 
braid just below the nape of her 
neck and fastened the top of the 
braid and hid it beneath the cush- 
ion of the easy chair. 

After that she made a constant 
struggle against time. The five 
years were no longer her years. 
They belonged to the child. She 
worked with him from the earliest 
days, trying to speed his develop- 
ment. She must get him to talk 
and understand before the govern- 
ment reached him. She had him 
knowing simple vocabulary just a 
little after he was one year old. She 
did not teach him English — to do 
so would have been too daring and 
he might give himself away. She 
kept him healthy and she drew 
pictures for him and sang songs to 
him and she rocked him and she 
swung him and she did not try to 
make him laugh. He was a quick 
and sober child. 



AFTER THEY TOOK THE PANAMA CANAL 



135 




As he grew older she taught him 
to paint and draw and sing. She 
taught him rhymes and tunes and 
dances. She taught him games to 
play but above all she tried to 
speed his progress in the language. 

She took him with her when she 
walked to the town square on Fri- 
days. She passed Tall with the 
child in her arms and with the 
child by the hand and when she 
got home she would explain to 
George and tell him about the 
need for secrecy. She taught him 
duplicity and how to lie. She won 
him over as solidly as she could 
and she tried to teach him to beat 
the government at every turn. 

But he was only a child and she 
could never be sure. She was 
afraid but when she passed the 
square on Friday she was not 
afraid and the weekends only saw 
her redoubling her efforts. 

But she could not decide what 
to teach him. She must be simple, 
she must pick out only a few things 
and then have him understand 
that he must not say anything 
about them when they took him to 
the camp. He must think only at 
night when the lights were out in 
the dormitories. He must offer no 
resistance during the training. But 
he must remember. He must re- 
member. What? 

That grass is green, what else? 
That wood is wood and God is 
good? She grew sad and she began 
to have a return of the morning 
sensation she had first experienced 



when she lost the book. Duplicity 
would be more important than 
honesty. Shrewdness more impor- 
tant than bravery. He must re- 
member, though. He must remem- 
ber. But how could she teach him 
all that she had learned. 

One night in August when the 
moon was dark she took the Bible 
from the dust broom and the art 
book from the sugar box and went 
out to the back yard. She dug up 
some earth with the spade, 
wrapped the books in heavy cloth 
and buried them and showed the 
child how he could tell where they 
were without a marker. But where 
would he learn English? She could 
not answer that. 

Her thirty-fifth birthday came 
in the child’s fourth year. Her 
neck had grown thin and her jowls 
loose and her face was lined and 
she saw the aging in Tall when she 
passed him in the street and it 
made her love him more. That he 
also aged made him less an alien. 
The bone showed in her leg and 
the veins stood around her knee 
and she wondered if George would 
know of her age or her death. 

She grew desperate about the 
child and could not decide what to 
do during the last half year that 
she had. 

“Do not come to the Square 
next week,” he said in August. 
Then: “Myra,” he said and looked 
at her the way he had the first time 
he had come to her place. “Child,” 
he said and stared for a long time 



136 



GALAXY 




at the boy. They passed. Myra did 
not go the square next Friday. 

UARLY that Friday morning 
■^Tall killed himself in the center 
of the public square in this man- 
ner: first he made a large sign and 
stuck it in the dirt. Then he took a 
black marker and wrote Remem- 
ber in large letters on every page 
of the Shakespeare book, which he 
had carefully cut from its binding 
with a sharp blade. Then he placed 
himself at the foot of the post and 
slashed his throat before dawn. 

In the morning when the people 
came to work the pages of the 
book were scattered through the 
square by the wind and some of 
the people picked them up and 
secreted them and when they saw 
the words in the old language, al- 
though they had only one page, 
they could not swallow and they 
blinked over and over again. 

On the large placard was writ- 
ten: REMEMBER: IN MY 

COUNTRY, TOO. 

Myra only heard accounts of 
this from her neighbors. It was the 
first time the neighbors had men- 
tioned the old ways since the inva- 
sion. But Myra did gd into the 
square as soon as she heard. 

She found Yuri in the center of 
a glass-windowed store front. His 
body had been stripped and the 
nails pulled. His genitals had been 
mutilated and his eyes removed. 
The page from the book and the 
word remember on it had been 



stuck by a long stick into his chest. 

Myra was overwhelmed with a 
great feeling of happiness. She was 
happy that Yuri had died long 
before the torture. She went back 
and brought down the child. 

The children were told that after 
ten years in the camp, they would 
be free to seek out their mothers. 
But this was a lie. Their mothers 
were usually executed by then. 
Myra did not tell the child this. 
But she told him everything else. 
She told him about America and 
she told him about freedom and 
she told him about his father’s 
death. She told him about Einstein 
and about the countryside where 
she had been a child and she told 
him about Jesus, Da Vinci and 
about as many things as she could 
name and explain in the time that 
was left. 

She had told only one. But he 
must tell two. He must somewhere 
find two he trusted before he died. 
And they must find two. And that 
was all. She loved him. But re- 
membering was more important 
and telling even more important 
than remembering. So they took 
the child on his fifth birthday and 
they took Myra the same day. 

She removed the braided hair 
from the easy chair and folded it 
between her breasts and she went 
out with them to the shipment 
station and they took her to New 
York. And when she walked into 
the chamber, she saw George 
again. 



AFTER THEY TOOK THE PANAMA CANAL 



137 




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GALAXY BOOKSHELF 

{ Continued from page 2 ) 
Scheffing Institute — and a wolf of 
Wall Street can instantly become 
a connoisseur of the arts. Or an 
even abler wolf. 

The story Silverberg has to tell 
is the story of the struggle between 
John Roditis, upstart Greek bil- 
lionaire, and Mark Kaufmann, 
new titular head of the aristocratic 
Kaufmann family related by a 
thousand strands of time, common 
cause and blood kinship with the 
Rothschilds, the Schiffs, the Leh- 
mans and the other great names of 
finance. The object of the strug- 
gle is the persona of the recently 
dead grand old buccaneer, Mark’s 
uncle Paul Kaufmann. 

Clearly, Roditis cannot be per- 
mitted to acquire this dynamic ad- 
ded increment to his already bur- 
geoning character. Just as obvi- 
ously, few other members of even 
the elite can command the 
strength of will to prevent Paul’s 
character from overwhelming their 
own personalities and becoming a 
dybbuk — a resurrected persona in 
command of a stolen body whose 
true owner, if he survives at all, sur- 
vives only as shreds and tatters 
caught in the lowest, darkest reces- 
ses of his own brain. 

Complicating Mark Kauf- 
mann’s problem as he tries to fore- 
stall Roditis is an Institute rule 
that prevents him from simply pur- 
chasing and acquiring the persona 



of such a close relative as his uncle. 
Aggravating his annoyance is the 
fact that if Roditis does acquire 
Paul, he will then perforce become 
a member of the Kaufmann social 
circle and the nouveau riche Greek 
will have to be invited to tea. 

And of course neither of these 
latter two complications are ra- 
tional in terms of Silverberg’s orig- 
inal premise; nor is his practice, 
early in the book, of referring to 
the personae as “souls.” All three 
notions, mind you, add significant- 
ly to the power of his narrative but 
they are nonsense in the context 
of the fairly straightforward sus- 
pense story he then actually writes. 

That story — the one you get by 
reading this book in your best 
Evelyn Wood Dynamics manner 
- is an acceptable and entertain- 
ing one, particularly ornamented 
by the at first subsidiary develop- 
ment of Risa, Mark’s daughter, 
who is beyond doubt one of Silver- 
berg’s best characterizations ever. 
But the real effect of this book has 
nothing to do with its overt events. 

Let me explain, first, that I was 
genuinely moved by this story 
while at the same time appreciating 
the fact that it’s rather plainly as- 
sembled, with many features 
painted on indifferently framed 
canvas instead of being mortared 
together in real brick. I suspect 
that you may well be moved by it, 
too. And now the question is, why? 

Risa is much more attractive as 



142 



GALAXY 




a case history than she really is as 
a person. So are her father and un- 
cle Paul. All three of them are far 
too self-sufficient to care whether 
anyone identifies with them, let 
alone you or me. Roditis, oddly 
enough, appears for the most part 
only as an utterer of dialogue. At 
the very end Silverberg speaks of 
his vitality; my first reaction was. 
What vitality? I knew him almost 
entirely as a querulous voice bul- 
lying a subordinate. 

So it isn’t character identifica- 
tion that transmits this book’s pe- 
culiar potency. And it isn’t the 
power of prose images, either; Sil- 
verberg uses few silver nails in his 
carpentry. 

Where this book works is where 
it isn’t either science or fiction. 

I mean, would rational minds 
confuse an electronic echo with the 
soul? Would they invite it to din- 
ner? Is it incest to take an uncle 
into one’s mind? 

Would it comfort your dying to 
know that someone else would in- 
herit your memories? Could those 
memories, packed into otherwise 
unused portions of the cerebral 
matrix, leak over into previously 
occupied incremental spaces and, 
in an organized manner, oust those 
discrete bits, again retaining an or- 
ganized manner? That’s what you’d 
need, to achieve the melodramatic 
persona-battles, back and forth, 
Silverberg depicts here. And if it 
happened, is it likely, really likely, 
that the world would adopt the 



particular slang term, dybbukl 

I doubt it. I think the very best 
parts of this book are the unwrit- 
ten ones, the ones that play on the 
good old half-buried fears and 
longings, the love-death pushrne- 
pullyou that drives men in the old, 
old- quest whose by-product is 
power. 

MASQUE WORLD, by Alexei 
Panshin (Ace #02320, 6O0), is the 
third story in the Anthony Villiers 
series that also includes Star Well 
(02318, 50g) and The Thurb Revo- 
lution (02319, 500). In this latest 
number, Villiers — otherwise Vis- 
count Charteris — and his compan- 
ion, Torve the Trog, continue what 
may eventually be an explicit sa- 
ga or ballade about a younger 
son’s life in a vaguely feudal in- 
terstellar empire. 

It makes for a charming crea- 
tion. The imperial background 
may or may not prove eventually 
relevant. Meanwhile, it furnishes 
an excuse for Panshin to introduce 
all the elements, quaint or not, 
technological or medieval, re- 
quired to spin out his well-told 
stories. He can introduce both a 
robot butler and a lecherous old 
procurator, the latter given to 
dropping overripe melons down 
palace stairwells at other men’s 
wives. And he can introduce an im- 
perial envoy into a real identity cri- 
sis via a Trog suit. With the whole 
thing coming to a head at peel- 
grunt. 



GALAXY BOOKSHELF 



143 




What? Oh, that’s when the peels 
grunt, of course. 

Read the book. Stop asking silly 
questions. 

THE PALACE OF ETER- 
NITY, by Bob Shaw (Ace Special 
65050, 75(t), was sent to me with a 
covering note from the editor that 
read: “Hope you like it better than 
his last one.” Well, his last one was 
The Two-Timers, which I did not 
like all that much, though I re- 
served some kind remarks for 
Shaw’s ability. 1 still think quite 
well of Shaw as a writer. But it’s 
clear from this latest example that 
he’s still not a novelist. 

In the present instance what be- 
gins as a routine space opera with 
Van Vogtian overtones soon cata- 
lyzes into a Van Vogtian mystical 
exercise with images from Eric 
Frank Russell. If you like space 
opera the ending will cheat you. If 
you admire Van Vogt, it’s a very 
long hike to the first double take. 
Either way. I’d think an editor 
would more properly say some- 
thing like “Hope he’s done better 
this time.” 

But that concept may be a little 
difficult to grasp. Also thus, judg- 
ing by the context of other notes 
from management, is the essential 
invidiousness of sending advance- 
advance copies of the Ace Specials 
to carefully selected persons and 
then carefully selecting only the 
laudatory responses for the blurbs 
on the covers. 



From a purely practical stand- 
point, of course, I can think of few 
more effective devices for market- 
ing an original paperback, in the 
face of reprints which are free to 
select an isolated sentence about 
the hardcover edition from a re- 
view in the Hartford Courant or a 
paragraph from the “review” 
column of a West Texas weekly 
that is actually made up out of 
quotes from publishers’ press re- 
leases. But it is a marketing device 
and I can’t fully understand what 
makes Ace so idignant to me when 
I merely point it out. Can you? 

THE LEFT HA ND OF DA RK- 
NESS, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Ace 
Special 47800, 95e) is stuccoed- 
over with a semi-relevant quote 
from Michael Moorcock, a Ted 
White quote that thinks to praise 
this book by equating it with 
Frank Herbert’s Dune — and then, 
inside, even a laudatory quote from 
Frank Herbert. But a book like this 
needs no introduction and is in fact 
embarrassed by these adumbra- 
tions, even the nice one from Da- 
mon Knight. 

This is a narrative so fully real- 
ized, so compellingly told, so mas- 
terfully executed that even an edi- 
tor should have the wit to just show 
it to his readers and stand back. 
With the exception of Damon 
Knight, not one of these attorneys 
is a peer of this client. 

Meanwhile, what’s the book 
about? Will I like it? Should I buy 



144 



GALAXY 




it? Try to discover that from this 
testimonial matter and you learn 
two things. 1) It’s got “Ideas that 
reflect many of the central con- 
cerns of Western society, to say 
nothing of imagery reminiscent of 
Beardsley and the melody and wit 
of a Gilbert and Sullivan oper- 
etta,” according to Mike Moor- 
cock. 2) It’s a novel of “exotic ad- 
venture on a far planet whose peo- 
ple are completely human except 
for one thing: they are all of the 
same sex,” according to the blurb 
writer on the first page. 

Bull doody. Leaving aside the 
Moorcock quote, which reflects a 
critical expository style reminis- 
cent of Playboy’s movie reviews, 
to say nothing of the logical level 
attained in the editorial replies in 
“Letters to Superman,” this is a 
novel of adventure on a planet 
whose ambi-sexual human inhab- 
itants go through an oestrus cycle 
in which they may play either the 
male or female role. 

It is, being a novel written by a 
magnificent writer, a totally com- 
pelling tale of human peril and 
striving under circumstances in 
which human love, and a number 
of other noble qualities,^an be de- 
picted in a fresh context. In that 
context, they display attributes 
and effects not possible in the or- 
dinary adventure novel. 

Only by conceiving, for instance, 
does a member of this cast of 
characters remain a female for 



more than a few days, and even so 
she raises her child, after lactation 
ceases, as an individual indistin- 
guishable from the child’s no long- 
er sexual father. Yet the three love 
each other, though years and dis- 
tances may separate them. 

What this world has to teach its 
only heterosexual human, galactic 
ambassador Genly Ai, is what it 
also teaches us. I can’t imagine 
anyone reading it and not learning 
profoundly from it. Anyone, that 
is, but the endorsers and editors 
whose other concerns seem not to 
have allowed sufficient time for 
either perceptive thought or mean- 
ingful utterance. 

See you next month, space 
buffs! Till then, this is your old 
buddy. Blaster Al, sayin’ so long 
until we meet again on the Star- 
lanes! ♦ 



Notice To All Readers 



W« are NOT^ — ref>«at NOT — 
skipping an issue of Ga/axy. The 
cover date of what woufd have 
been the January issue has been 
changed to February to give Gai- 
axy and its sister publication, H, 
equivalent sales periods on the 
newsstands. All subscriptions 
are being updated accordingly. 



GALAXY BOOKSHELF 



145 





DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 

was not until Gundersen saw Kurtz 
slowly rotate his left arm through 
a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree 
twist that he realized the armpit 
must have been reconstructed into 
some kind of versatile ball-and- 
socket arrangement. 

Kurtz struggled desperately to 
speak, blurting words in a language 
Gundersen had never heard. His 
eyeballs visibly stirred beneath his 
lids. His tongue slipped forth to 
moisten his lips. Something like a 
three-lobed adam’s apple bobbed 
in his throat. Briefly he humped his 
body, drawing the skin tight over 
curiously broadened bones. He 
continued to speak. Occasionally 
an intelligible word in English or 
nildororu emerged, embedded in a 
flow of gibberish. 

“River . . . death . . . lost . . . 
horror . . . river . . . cave . . . warm 
. . . smash . . . black . . . go . . . god 
. . . horror . . . born . . . lost ...” 
“What is he saying?” Gundersen 
asked. 

“No one knows. Even when we 
can understand the words he 
doesn’t make sense. And mostly 
we can’t even understand the 
words.” 

“Has he been conscious at all?” 
“Not really,” Seena said. 
“Sometimes his eyes are open but 
he never responds to anything 
around him. Come. Look.” 

She went to the bed and drew 
Kurtz’ eyelids open. Gundersen 
saw eyes that had no whites at all. 
From rim to rim their shining sur- 
faces were a deep, lustrous black, 
dappled by random spots of light 



(Continued from page 124) 

blue. He held three fingers up be- 
fore those eyes and waved his hand 
from side to side. Kurtz took no 
notice. Seena released the lids and 
the eyes remained open, even when 
the tips of Gundersen’s fingers ap- 
proached quite closely. But as Gun- 
dersen withdrew his hand, Kurtz 
lifted his right hand and seized 
Gundersen’s wrist. The grotesquely 
elongated fingers encircled the 
wrist completely, met, and coiled 
halfway around it again. Slowly 
and with tremendous strength 
Kurtz pulled Gundersen down un- 
til he was kneeling beside the bed. 

N OW KURTZ spoke only in En- 
glish. As before, he seemed to 
be in desperate anguish, forcing 
the words out of some nightmare 
recess, with no perceptible ac- 
centing or punctuation: “Water 
sleep death save sleep sleep fire 
love water dream cold sleep plan 
rise fall rise rise rise.” After a mo- 
ment he added, “Fall.” Then the 
flow of nonsense-syllables returned 
and the fingers relinquished their 
fierce grip on Gundersen’s wrist. 

Seena said, “He seemed to be 
telling us something. I never heard 
him speak so many consecutive in- 
telligible words.” 

“But what was he saying?” 

“1 can’t tell you that. But a 
meaning was there.” 

Gundersen nodded. The tormen- 
ted Kurtz had delivered his testa- 
ment, his blessing. 

. . . sleep plan rise fall rise fall 
rise rise. Fall. 

Perhaps it even made sense. 



146 



GALAXY 




“And he reacted to your pres- 
ence,” Seena went on. “He saw 
you, he took your arm. Say some- 
thing to him. See if you can get his 
attention again.” 

“Jeff?” Gundersen whispered, 
kneeling. “Jeff, do you remember 
me? Edmund Gundersen. I’ve 
come back, Jeff. Can you hear 
anything I’m saying? If you un- 
derstand me, Jeff, raise your right 
hand again.” 

Kurtz did not raise his hand. He 
uttered a strangled moan, low and 
appalling. Then his eyes slowly 
closed and he lapsed into a rigid si- 
lence. Muscles rippled beneath his 
altered skin. Beads of acrid sweat 
broke from his pores. Gundersen 
rose to his feet shortly and walked 
away. 

“How long was he up there?” he 
asked. 

“Close to half a year. I thought 
he was dead. Then two sulidoror 
brought him back on a kind of 
stretcher.” 

“Changed. And here he lies. 
He’s changed much more than you 
imagine,” Seena said. “Inside, 
everything’s new and different. 
He’s got almost no digestive tract 
at all. Solid food is impossible for 
him — I give him fruit juices. His 
heart has extra chambers. His 
lungs are twice as big as they 
should be. The diagnostat couldn’t 
tell me a thing — because he didn’t 
correspond to any of the paramet- 
ers for a human body.” 

“And this happened to him in 
rebirth?” 

“In rebirth, yes. They take a 
drug and it changes them. And it 
works on humans, too. It’s the 



same drug they use on Earth for 
organ regeneration — the venom — 
but here they use a stronger dose 
and the body runs wild. If you go 
up there, Edmund, this is what’ll 
happen to you.” 

“How do you know it was rebirth 
that did this to him?” 

“I know.” 

“How?” 

“That’s what he said he was go- 
ing up there for. And the sulidoror 
who brought him back said he had 
undergone rebirth.” 

“Maybe they were lying. Maybe 
rebirth is one thing, a beneficial 
thing, and there’s another thing 
— a harmful thing — they gave to 
Kurtz because he had been so 
evil.” 

“You’re deceiving yourself,” 
Seena said. “There’s only one pro- 
cess and this is its result.” 

“Possibly different people re- 
spond differently to the process, 
then. If there is only one process. 
But I still say you can’t be sure that 
it was rebirth that actually did this 
to him.” 

“Don’t talk nonsense.” 

“I mean it. Maybe something 
within Kurtz made him turn out 
like this and I’d turn out another 
way. A better way.” 

“Do you want to be changed, Ed- 
mund?” 

“I’d risk it.” 

“You’d cease to be human.” 

“I’ve tried being human for quite 
a while. Maybe it’s time to try 
something else.” 

“I won’t let you go,” Seena said. 
“You won’t? What claim do you 
have on me?” 

“I’ve already lost Jeff to them. 



DOWNWARDTOTHE EARTH 



147 




If you go up there too, Edmund — ” 

“Yes?” 

She faltered. “All right. I’ve got 
no way to threaten you. But don’t 

go.” 

“I have to.” 

“You’re just like him! Puffed up 
with the importance of your own 
supposed sins. Imagining the need 
for some kind of ghastly redemp- 
tion. It’s sick, don’t you see? You 
just want to hurt yourself, in the 
worst possible way.” Her eyes glit- 
tered even more brightly. “Listen 
to me. If you need to suffer — I’ll 
help you. You want me to whip 
you? Stamp on you? I’ll play sadist 
for you if you’ve got to play 
masochist. I’ll give you all the tor- 
ment you want. But don’t go up 
mist country: That’s carrying a 
game too far, Edmund.” 

“You don’t understand, Seena.” 

“Do you?” 

“Perhaps I will, when I come 
back from there.” 

“You’ll come back like Kurtz!” 
she screamed. She rushed toward 
Kurtz’ bed. “Look at him! Look at 
those feet! Look at his eyes! His 
mouth, his nose, his fingers, his 
everything! He isn’t human any 
more. Do you want to lie there like 
him — muttering nonsense, living in 
some weird dream all day and all 
night?” 

Gundersen wavered. 

“I have to go,” he said, less 
firmly than before. 

“He’s living in hell,” Seena said. 
“You’ll be there too.” 

She came to Gundersen and 
pressed herself against him. He 
felt the hot tips of her breasts 
grazing his skin. Her hands clawed 



his back desperately. Her thighs 
pressed his. A great sadness came 
over him for all that Seena once 
had meant to him, for all that she 
had been, for what she had be- 
come, for what her life must be 
like with a monster to care for. He 
was shaken by a vision of the lost 
and irrecoverable past, of the dark 
and uncertain present, of the 
bleak, frightening future. Again he 
wavered. Then he gently pushed 
her away from him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m go- 
ing.” 

“Why? Why? What a waste!’ 
Tears trickled down her cheeks. 
“If you need a religion,” she said, 
“pick an Earth religion. There’s no 
reason why you have to — ” 

“There is a reason,” Gundersen 
said. He drew her close to him 
again and very lightly kissed her 
eyelids, then her lips. Then he 
kissed her between the breasts and 
released her. He walked over to 
Kurtz and stood for a moment 
looking down, trying to come to 
terms with the man’s bizarre meta- 
morphosis. Now he noticed some- 
thing he had not observed earlier; 
the thickened texture of the skin of 
Kurtz’ back, as if dark little 
plaques were sprouting on both 
sides of his spine. No doubt there 
were many other changes as well, 
apparent only on a close inspec- 
tion. Kurtz’ eyes opened once 
again, and the black glossy orbs 
moved, as if seeking to meet Gun- 
dersen’s eyes. He stared down at 
them, at the pattern of blue 
speckles against the shining solid 
background. 

Kurtz said, amidst many sounds 



148 



GALAXY 




Gundersen could not comprehend, 
“Dance . . . live . . . seek ... die 
. . . die.” 

It was time to leave. 

W ALKING past the motionless, 
rigid Seena, Gundersen left the 
room. He stepped onto the veranda 
and saw that his five nildoror were 
gathered outside the station, in the 
garden. Gundersen called out and 
Srin’gahar looked up. 

“I’m ready,” Gundersen said. 
“We can leave as soon as 1 have 
my things.” 

He found his clothes and pre- 
pared to depart. Seena came to him 
again. She was dressed in a cling- 
ing black robe, her slider wound 
around her left arm. Her face was 
bleak. 

He asked, “Do you have any 
messages for Ced Cullen, if 1 find 
him?” 

“I have no messages for any- 
one.” 

“All right. Thanks for the hos- 
pitality, Seena. It was good to see 
you again.” 

“The next time I see you,” she 
said, “you won’t know who 1 am. 
Or who you are.” 

“Perhaps.” 

He left her and went to the nil- 
doror. Srin’gahar silently accepted 
the burden of him. Seena stood on 
the veranda of the station, watch- 
ing the departure. In a little while 
he could no longer see her. The pro- 
cession moved out along the bank 
of the river, past the place where 
Kurtz had danced all night with the 
nildoror so many years ago. 

Kurtz. Closing his eyes, Gunder- 
sen imagined the glassy blind 



stare, the lofty forehead, the flat- 
tened face, the wasted flesh, the 
twisted legs, the deformed feet. 
Against that he placed his memo- 
ries of the old Kurtz, that graceful 
and extraordinary-looking man, so 
tall and slender, so self-contained. 
What demons had driven Kurtz, in 
the end, to surrender his body and 
his soul to the priests of rebirth? 
How long had the reshaping of 
Kurtz taken? Had he felt any pain 
during the process? And how 
much awareness did he now have 
of his own condition? What had 
Kurtz said? I am Kurtz who toyed 
vvith your souls and now I offer 
you my own? Gundersen had never 
heard Kurtz speak in any tone but 
that of sardonic detachment — how 
could Kurtz have displayed real 
emotion, fear, remorse, guilt? lam 
Kurtz the sinner, take me and deal 
with me as you wish. I am Kurtz 
the fallen. I am Kurtz the damned. 
/ am Kurtz and I am yours. . . 
Gundersen imagined Kurtz lying in 
some misty northern valley, his 
bones softened by the elixirs of the 
sulidoror, his body dissolving, be- 
coming a pink jellied lump which 
now was free to seek a new form, 
to strive toward an altered Kurtz- 
ness that would be cleansed of its 
old Satanic impurities. Was it pre- 
sumptuous of Gundersen to place 
himself in the same class as Kurtz, 
to claim the same spiritual short- 
comings, to go forward to meet 
that same terrible destiny? Was 
Seena not right, that this was a 
game, that he was merely playing 
at masochistic self-dramatization, 
electing himself the hero of a 
tragic myth, burdened by the ob- 



DOWNWARDTOTHE EARTH 



149 




session to undertake an alien pil- 
grimage? But the compulsion 
seemed real enough to him and 
not at all a pretense. 

/ will go. I am not Kurtz but / 
will go because / must go. 

In the distance, receding but yet 
powerful, the roar and throb of the 
waterfall still sounded. And as the 
rushing water hurtled down the 
face of the cliff it seemed to drum 
forth the words of Kurtz, the 
warning, the blessing, the threat, 
the prophecy, the curse: water 
sleep death save sleep sleep fire 
love water dream cold sleep plan 
rise fall rise fall rise rise rise. 

Fall. 

XII 

F or administrative purposes the 
Earthmen, during their years of 
occupation of Holman’s World, 
had marked off boundaries arbi- 
trarily here and here and here, 
choosing this parallel of latitude, 
that meridian of longitude, to en- 
compass a district or sector. Since 
Belzagor itself knew nothing of 
parallels of latitude nor of other 
human measures and boundaries, 
those demarcations by now existed 
only in the archives of the Com- 
pany and in the memories of the 
dwindling human population of the 
planet. But one boundary was far 
from arbitrary and its power still 
held — the natural line dividing the 
tropics from the mist country. On 
one side of that line lay the trop- 
ical highlands, sunbathed, fertile, 
forming the upper limit of the 
central band of lush vegetation 
that stretched down to the Torrid 



equatorial jungle. On the other 
side of that line, only a few kilo- 
meters away, the north came roll- 
ing in, creating the white world of 
the mists. The transition was sharp 
and, for a newcomer, even terrify- 
ing. One could explain it prosaical- 
ly enough in terms of Belzagor’s 
axial tilt and the effect that had on 
the melting of polar snows. One 
could speak learnedly of the huge 
icecaps in which so much mois- 
ture was locked, icecaps that ex- 
tended so far into the temperate 
zones of the planet that the 
warmth of the tropics was able to 
nibble at them, liberating great 
masses of water vapor that swirled 
upward, curved poleward, and re- 
turned to the icecaps as regener- 
ating snow. One could talk of the 
clash of climates and of the result- 
ing marginal zones that were 
neither hot nor cold and were for- 
ever shrouded in the dense clouds 
born of that clash. But even these 
explanations did not prepare one 
for the initial shock of crossing the 
divide. One had a few hints: stray 
tufts of fog that drifted across the 
boundary and blotted out broad 
patches of the tropical highlands 
until the midday sun burned them 
away. Yet the actual change, when 
it came, was so profound, so abso- 
lute, that it stunned the spirit. 

Gundersen and his nildoror com- 
panions were still some kilometers 
short of that point of change when 
a party of sulidoror came out of 
the bush and stopped them. Bor- 
der guards. 

Gundersen took no part in the 
discussion. The nildoror and the 
sulidoror drew to one side, leaving 



150 



GALAXY 




him alone to contemplate the lofty 
banks of white mist on the north- 
ern horizon. There seemed to be 
trouble. One tall, sleek young suli- 
dor pointed several times at Gun- 
dersen and spoke at length. Srin’- 
gahar replied in a few syllables 
and the sulidor appeared to grow 
angry, striding back and forth and 
vehemently knocking bark from 
trees with swipes of his huge 
claws. Srin’gahar spoke again and 
then some agreement was reached. 
The angry sulidor stalked off into 
the forest and Srin’gahar beckoned 
to Gundersen to remount. Guided 
by the two sulidor who remained, 
they resumed the northward 
march. 

“What was the argument 
about?” Gundersen asked. 

“Nothing.” 

“But he seemed very angry.” 

“It did not matter,” said Srin’- 
gahar. 

“Was he trying to keep me from 
crossing the boundary?” 

“He felt you should not go 
across,” Srin’gahar admitted. 

“Why? 1 have a many-born’s 
permission.” 

“This was a personal grudge, 
friend of my journey. The sulidor 
claimed that you had offended him 
in time past. He knew you from the 
old days.” 

“That’s impossible,” Gundersen 
said. “I had hardly any contact at 
all with sulidoror back then. They 
never came out of the mist coun- 
try and I scarcely ever went into 
it. I doubt that I spoke a dozen 
words to sulidoror in eight years on 
this world.” 

“The sulidor was not wrong in 



remembering that he had had 
contact with you,” said Srin’gahar 
gently. “I must tell you that there 
are reliable witnesses to the event.” 
“When? Where?” 

“It was a long time ago,” Srin’- 
gahar said. The nildor appeared 
content with that vague answer and 
offered no other details. After a few 
moments of silence he added: “The 
sulidor had good reason to be un- 
happy with you, I think. But we 
told him that you meant to atone 
for all of your past deeds and in 
the end he yielded. The sulidoror 
often are a stubborn and vindic- 
tive race.” 

“What did I do to him?” 

“We do not need to talk of such 
things,” replied Srin’gahar. 

T he nildor retreated into si- 
lence. Gundersen had ample 
time to ponder the grammatical 
ambiguities of that last sentence. 
On the basis of its verbal content 
alone, it might have meant. It is 
useless to talk oj such things, or. 
It is harmful to talk oJ such things, 
or. It would be embarrassing to 
you to talk of such things, or. It 
would be embarrassing to me to 
talk of such things, or. It is im- 
proper to talk of such things, or. 
It is tasteless to talk of such 
things. Only with the aid of the 
supplementary gestures, the move- 
ments of the crest-spines, the 
trunk, the ears, could the precise 
meaning be fathomed and Gun- 
dersen had neither the skill nor 
the right position for detecting 
those gestures. He was puzzled. 
He had no recollection of ever 
having given offense to a sulidor. 



DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH 



151 




After a while he concluded that 
Srin’gahar was deliberately being 
cryptic and might be speaking in 
parables too subtle or too alien for 
an Earthman’s mind to catch. In 
any case the sulidor had withdrawn 
his mysterious objections to Gun- 
dersen’s journey and the mist coun- 
try was only a short distance away. 
Already the foliage of the jungle 
trees was more sparse than it had 
been a kilometer or two back and 
the trees themselves were smaller 
and more widely spaced. Pockets 
of heavy fog now were more fre- 
quent. In many places the sandy 
yellow soil was wholly exposed. 
Yet the air was warm and clear 
and the underbrush profuse and 
the bright golden sun was reas- 
suringly visible — this was still un- 
mistakably a place of benign and 
even commonplace climate. 

Abruptly Gundersen felt a cold 
wind out of the north signaling 
change. The path wound down a 
slight incline, and when it rose on 
the far side he looked over a hum- 
mock into a broad field of com- 
plete desolation, a no-thing’s-land 
between the jungle and the mist 
country. No tree, no shrub, no 
moss grew here. There was only 
the yellow soil, covered with a 
sprinkling of pebbles. Beyond this 
sterile zone Gundersen was con- 
fronted by a white palisade, glit- 
tering fiercely with reflected sun- 
light. Seemingly it was a cliff of 
ice hundreds of meters high that 
barred the way as far as he could 
see. In the extreme distance, be- 
hind and above this white wall, 
soared the tip of a mountain, pale 
red in color, whose rugged spires 



and peaks and parapets stood forth 
sharply and strangely against an 
iron-gray sky. Everything appeared 
larger than life, massive, mon- 
strous, excessive. 

“Here you must walk by your- 
self,” said Srin’gahar. “I regret 
this but it is the custom. I can car- 
ry you no farther.” 

Gundersen promptly clambered 
down. 

Unexpectedly he found himself 
panting after no more than fifty 
meters of walking beside the five 
nildoror. Their pace was slow and 
stately but the air here was evi- 
dently thinner than he knew. He 
forced himself to hide his distress. 
He would go on. He felt light- 
headed, oddly buoyant, and he 
would master the pounding in his 
chest and the throbbing in his tem- 
ples. The new chill in the air was in- 
vigorating in its austerity. They 
were halfway across the zone of 
emptiness and Gundersen now 
could clearly tell that what had 
appeared to be a solid white bar- 
rier stretching across the world was 
in fact a dense wall of mist at 
ground level. Outlying strands of 
that mist kissed his face. At its 
clammy touch images of death 
stirred in his mind — skulls and 
tombs and coffins and veils — but 
they did not dismay him. He 
looked toward the rose-red moun- 
tain dominating the land far to the 
north. As he did so the clouds that 
lay over the mist country parted, 
permitting the sun to strike the 
mountain’s highest peak, a snowy 
dome of great expanse, and it 
seemed to him then that the face 
of Kurtz, transfigured, serene, 
looked down at him out of that 



152 



GALAXY 




smooth rounded peak. For a mo- 
ment there was silence. 

From the whiteness ahead 
emerged the figure of a giant old 
sulidor — Na-sinisul, keeping the 
promise he had made to be their 
guide. The sulidoror who had ac- 
companied them this far exchanged 
a few words with Na-sinisul and 
trudged off back toward the jungle 
belt. Na-sinisul gestured. Walking 
alongside Srin’gahar, Gundersen 
went forward. 

In a few minutes the procession 
entered the mist. 

He did not find the mist so solid 
once he was within it. Much of the 
time he could see for twenty or 
thirty or even fifty meters in any di- 
rection. There were occasional in- 
explicable vortices of fog that 
were much thicker in texture and 
in which he could barely make 
out the green of Srin’gahar beside 
him — but these were few and 
quickly traversed. The sky was 
gray and sunless. At moments the 
solar ball could be discerned as a 
vague glow behind the clouds. 
The landscape was one of raw 
rock, bare soil and low trees — 
practically a tundra, although the 
air was merely chilly and not re- 
ally cold. Many of the trees were 
of species also found in the south, 
but here they were dwarfed and 
distorted, sometimes not having 
the form of trees at all, but run- 
ning along the ground like woody 
vines. Those trees that stood up- 
right were no taller than Gunder- 
sen and gray moss draped every 
branch. Beads of moisture dotted 
their leaves, their stems, the out- 
croppings of rock and all else. 



No one spoke. They marched for 
perhaps an hour, until Gundersen’s 
back was bowed and his feet were 
numb. The ground sloped imper- 
ceptibly upward. The air seemed to 
grow steadily thinner. The temper- 
ature dropped quite sharply as the 
day neared its end. The dreary en- 
velope of lowlying fog, endless and 
all-engulfing, exacted a toll on 
Gundersen’s spirit. When he had 
seen that band of mist from out- 
side, glittering brilliantly in the 
sunlight, it had stirred and excited 
him but now that he was inside it 
he felt small cheer. All color and 
warmth had drained from the uni- 
verse. He could not even see the 
glorious rose-red mountain from 
here. 

Like a mechanical man he went 
onward, sometimes forcing himself 
into a trot to keep up with the oth- 
ers. Na-sinisul set a formidable 
pace, which the nildoror had no dif- 
ficulty in meeting but Gundersen 
was pushed to his limits. He was 
shamed by the loudness of his 
gasps and grunts, though no one 
else took notice of them. His 
breath hung before his face, fog 
within fog. He wanted desperate- 
ly to rest. He could not bring him- 
self to ask the others to halt and 
wait for him, though. This was 
their pilgrimage. He was the self- 
invited guest. 

A DISMAL dusk began to de- 
scend. The grayness grew 
more gray and the faint hint of 
sunlight that had been evident 
now diminished. Visibility less- 
ened immensely. The air became 
quite cold. Gundersen, dressed for 



DOWNWARDTOTHE EARTH 



153 




jungle country, shivered at times. 

He realized he was alone. 

The nildoror were nowhere to be 
seen. Neither was Na-sinisul. Mist 
engulfed everything. Stunned, 
Gundersen rolled back the screen 
of his memory and saw that he 
must have been separated from 
his companions for several min- 
utes, without regarding it as in any 
way remarkable. By now they 
might be far ahead of him on 
some other road. 

He did not call out. 

He yielded first to the irresistible 
and dropped to his knees to rest. 
Squatting, he pressed his hands to 
his face, then put his knuckles to 
the cold ground and let his head 
loll forward while he sucked in air. 
It would have been easy to sprawl 
forward altogether and lose con- 
sciousness. They might find him 
sleeping in the morning. Or froz- 
en in the morning. He struggled to 
rise and succeeded on the third at- 
tempt. 

“Srin’gahar?” he said. 

Dizzy with exhaustion, he rushed 
forward, stumbling, sliding, collid- 
ing with trees, catching his feet in 
the undergrowth. He saw what was 
surely a nildor to his left and ran 
toward it, but when he clutched 
its flank he found it wet and icy, 
and he realized that he was grasp- 
ing a boulder. He flung himself 
away from it. Just beyond, a file of 
massive shapes presented them- 
selves — the nildoror marching past 
him? “Wait?” he called and ran — 
and felt the shock at his ankles as 
he plunged blindly into a shallow, 
frigid rivulet. He fell, landing on 
hands and knees in the water. 



Grimly he crawled to the far bank 
and lay there, recognizing the dark 
blurred shapes now as those of 
low, broad trees whipped by a ris- 
ing wind. 

All right. I'm lost. I'll wait right 
here until morning. . . 

He huddled into himself, trying 
to wring the cold water from his 
clothes. 

The night came, blackness in 
place of grayness. He sought 
moons overhead and found none. 
A terrible thirst consumed him. 
He tried to creep bdck to the 
brook but he could not even find 
that. His fingers were numb... His 
lips were cracking. But he discov- 
ered an island of calm within his 
discomfort and fear and clung to 
it, telling himself that none of 
what was happening was truly per- 
ilous and that all of it was some- 
how necessary. 

Unknown hours later, Srin’ga- 
har and Na-sinisul came to him. 
First Gundersen felt the soft prob- 
ing touch of Srin’gahar’s trunk 
against his cheek. He recoiled and 
flattened himself on the ground, re- 
laxing slowly as he realized what 
it was that had brushed his skin. 

Far above, the nildor said, “Here 
he is.” 

“Alive?” Na-sinisul asked, dark 
voice coming from worlds away, 
swaddled in layers of fog. 

“Alive. Wet and cold. Edmund- 
gundersen, can you stand up?” 

“Yes. I’m all right, I think.” 
Shame flooded his spirit. “Have 
you been looking for me all this 
time?” 

“No,” said Na-sinisul blandly. 
“We continued on to the village. 



154 



GALAXY 




There we discussed your absence. 
We could not be sure if you were 
lost or had separated yourself from 
us with a purpose. And then Srin’- 
gahar and I returned. Did you in- 
tend to leave us?” 

“I got lost,” Gundersen said 
miserably. 

Even now he was not permitted 
to ride the nildor. He staggered 
along between Srin’gahar and Na- 
sinisul, now and then clutching the 
sulidor’s thick fur or grasping the 
nildor’s smooth haunch, steadying 
himself whenever he felt his 
strength leaving him or whenever 
the unseen footing grew difficult. 
In time lights glimmered in the 
dark, a pale lanternglow coming 
milkily through the fogbound 
blackness. Dimly Gundersen saw 
the shabby huts of a sulidor village. 
Without waiting for an invitation 
he lurched into the nearest of the 
ramshackle log structures; It was 
steepwalled, musty-smelling, with 
strings of dried flowers and the 
bunched skins of animals sus- 
pended from the rafters. Several 
seated sulidoror looked at him with 
no show of interest. Gundersen 
warmed himself and dried his 
clothing. Someone brought him a 
bowl of sweet, thick broth and a 
little while afterward he was of- 
fered some strips of dried meat, 
which were difficult to bite and 
chew but extraordinarily well fla- 
vored. Dozens of sulidoror came 
and went. Once, when the flap of 
hide covering the door was left 
open, he caught sight of his nil- 
doror sitting just outside the hut. 
A tiny fierce-faced animal, fog- 
white and wizened, skittered up to 



him and inspected him with dis- 
dain — some northern beast, he 
supposed, that the sulidoror fa- 
vored as pets. The creature 
plucked at Gundersen’s still soggy 
clothing and made a cackling 
sound. Its tufted ears twitched. Its 
sharp little fingers probed his 
sleeve. Its long, prehensile tail 
curled and uncurled. Then it 
leaped into Gundersen’s lap, 
seized his arm with quick claws 
and nipped his flesh. The bite 
was no more painful than the 
pricking of a mosquito but Gun- 
dersen wondered what hideous 
alien infection he would now con- 
tract. He made no move to push 
the little animal away, however. 
Suddenly a great sulidoror paw 
descended, claws retracted, and 
knocked the beast across the room. 
The massive form of Na-sinisul 
lowered itself into a crouch next to 
Gundersen. The ejected animal 
chattered its rage from a far corner. 

Na-sinisul said, “Did the mun- 
zor bite you?” 

“Not deeply. Is it dangerous?” 

“No harm will come to you,” 
said the sulidor. “We will punish 
the animal.” 

“I hope you won’t. It was only 
playing.” 

“It must learn that guests are 
sacred,” said Na-sinisul firmly. 
He leaned close. Gundersen was 
aware of the sulidor’s fishy breath. 
Huge fangs gaped in the deep- 
muzzled mouth. Quietly Na-sin- 
isul said, “This village will house 
you until you are ready to go on. 1 
must leave with the nildoror and 
continue to the mountain of re- 
birth.” 



DOWNWARDTOTHE EARTH 



155 




“Is .that the big red mountain 
north of here?” 

“Yes. Their time is very close 
and so is mine. 1 will see them 
through their rebirths and then 
my turn will come.” 

“Sulidoror undergo rebirth too, 
then?” 

Na-sinsul seemed surprised. 
“How else could it be?” 

“I don’t know. I know so little 
about all of this.” 

“If sulidoror were not reborn,” 
said Na-sinisul, “then nildoror 
could not be reborn. One is in- 
separable from the other.” 

“In what way?” 

“If there were no day, could 
there be night?” 

T he analogy was too cryptic. 

Gundersen attempted to press 
for an explanation but Na-sinisul 
had come to speak of other mat- 
ters. Avoiding the Earthman’s 
questions, the sulidor said, “They 
tell me that you have come to our 
country to speak with a man of 
your own people, the man Cullen. 
Is this so?” 

“It is. It’s one of the reasons 
I’m here, anyway.” 

“The man Cullen lives three 
villages north of here and one 
village to the west. He has been 
informed that you have arrived 
and he summons you. Sulidoror 
of this village will conduct you to 
him when you wish to leave.” 

“I’ll leave in the morning,” 
Gundersen said. 

“I must declare one thing to 
you, first. The man Cullen has 
taken refuge among us and so he is 
sacred. There can be no hope of 



removing him from our country 
and delivering him to the nildor- 
or.” 

“I ask only to speak with him.” 

“That may be done. But your 
treaty with the nildoror is known 
to us. You must remember that 
you can fulfill that treaty only by 
a breach of our hospitality.” 

Gundersen made no reply. He 
did not see how he could promise 
anything of this nature to Na-sin- 
isul without at the same time for- 
swearing his promise to the many- 
born Vol’himyor. So he clung to 
his original inner treaty — he would 
speak with Cedric Cullen, and then 
he would decide how to act. But it 
disturbed him that the sulidoror 
were already aware of his true pur- 
pose in seeking Cullen. 

Na-sinisul left him. Gundersen 
attempted to sleep and for a while 
he achieved an uneasy doze. But 
the lamps flickered all night in the 
sulidor hut and lofty sulidoror 
strode back and forth noisily 
around and about him. And the 
nildoror just outside the building 
engaged in a long debate of which 
Gundersen could catch only a few 
meaningless syllables. Once Gun- 
dersen awoke to find the little 
long-eared munzor sitting on his 
chest and cackling. Later in the 
night three sulidoror hacked up a 
bloody carcass just next to the 
place where Gundersen huddled. 
The sounds of the rending of flesh 
awakened him briefly but he slip- 
ped back into his troubled sleep — 
only to wake again when a savage 
quarrel erupted over the division 
of the meat. When the bleak dawn 
came, Gundersen felt more tired 



156 



GALAXY 




than if he had not slept at all. 

He was given breakfast. Two 
young sulidoror, Se-holomir and 
Yi-gartigok, announced that they 
had been chosen to escort him to 
the village where Cullen was stay- 
ing. Na-sinisul and the five nildor- 
or prepared to leave for the moun- 
tain of rebirth. Gundersen made 
his farewells to his traveling com- 
panions. 

“1 wish you joy of your rebirth,” 
he said and watched as the huge 
shapes moved off into the mist. 

Not long afterward he resumed 
his own Journey. His new guides 
were taciturn and aloof — just as 
well, for he wanted no conversa- 
tion as he struggled through this 
hostile country. He needed to 
think. He was not sure at all what 
he would do after he had seen 
Cullen. His original plan of under- 
going rebirth, which had seemed 
so noble in the abstract, • now 
struck him as the highest folly — 
not only because of what Kurtz 
had become but because he saw it 
as a trespass, an unspontaneous 
and self-conscious venture into the 
rites of an alien species. Go to the 
rebirth mountain, yes. Satisfy your 
curiosity. But submit to rebirth? 
For the first time he was genuine- 
ly unsure of whether he would — 
and more than half suspicious that 
in the end he would draw back, 
unreborn. 

The tundra of the border zone 
was giving way to forest country. 
The phenomenon seemed a cur- 
ious inversion to him: trees were 
growing larger here in higher lat- 
itudes. But these were different 
trees. The dwarfed and twisted 



shrubs to his rear were natives of 
the jungle, making an unhappy 
adaptation to the mist. Here, deep- 
er in the mist country, true north- 
ern trees grew. They were thick 
boled and lofty, with dark corru- 
gated bark and tiny sprays of nee- 
dlelike leaves. Fog shrouded their 
upper branches. Through this cold 
and misty forest, too, ran lean, 
straggly animals, long-nosed and 
bony, which erupted from holes in 
the ground and sped up the sides 
of trees, evidently in quest of 
bough-dwelling rodents and birds. 
Broad patches of ground were cov- 
ered with snow, although summer 
was supposedly approaching in this 
hemisphere. On the second night 
northward came a hailstorm when 
a dense and tossing cloud of ice 
rode toward them on a thin whin- 
ing wind. Mute and glum, Gun- 
dersen’s companions marched on 
through it and so did he, not en- 
joying it. 

Generally now the mist was light 
at ground level and often he saw 
none at all for an hour or more. 
But it congealed far overhead as 
an unbroken veil, hiding the sky. 
Gundersen became accustomed to 
the barren soil, the angular 
branches of bare trees, the chilly 
penetrating dampness that was so 
different from the jungle’s humid- 
ity. He came to find beauty in the 
starkness. When fleecy coils of 
mist drifted like ghosts across a 
wide gray stream, when furry 
beasts sprinted over glazed fields 
of ice, when some hoarse ragged 
cry broke the incredible stillness, 
when the marchers turned an an- 
gle in the path and came upon a 



DOWNWARDTOTHE EARTH 



157 




white tableau of harsh wintry emp- 
tiness, Gundersen responded with 
a strange kind of delight. In the 
mist country, he thought, the hour 
is always the hour just after dawn. 



when everything is clean and new. 

On the fourth day Se-holomir 
said, “The village you seek lies be- 
hind the next hill.” 

TO BE CONCLUDED 



GALAXY STARS 



We met Gerald Jonas two-and-a half 
years ago, when he came to the New York 
World Science Fiction Convention to inter- 
view GALAXY writers for the /Yew Yor/ier 
magazine. Now GALAXY turns the tables 
and interviews Mr. Jonas. 

He began reading sf at about age thir- 
teen. "I was madly in love with Astound- 
ing," he says, "and was sure I didn't have 
room in my heart for two magazines, that 
is until GALAXY appeared and divided my 
loyalties." 

After four years at Yale, a year at Cam- 
bridge, much reading of Shakespeare and 
Joyce, and six months in the army, Jonas 
landed a berth as reporter on the Boston 
Hera/d. Later he returned to his native 
New York City and soon was collecting the 
material for Newsbreaks. the New Yorker's 
column fillers recounting humorous errors 



found in signs and publications. He still re- 
calls with glee the restaurant that offered 
"Leg of Salmon" and the account of the 
"tracks that were made by a big hopping 
rabbi and not the Jersey devil." Jonas soon 
moved up to contributing to the popular 
Ta/k of the Town feature and then to writ- 
ing by-lined fact articles, the most recent 
being on the American Friends Service 
Committe (Quakers). 

Jonas' inspiration for "The Shaker Re- 
vival" came when he had a summer home 
in Hancock, Mass., near a Shaker village — 
a restored community that is run as a mu- 
seum. 

Jonas' wife Susan, a researcher for 
Time-Life Books, is also an sf reader. They 
have a fourteen-month-old daughter, 
Sarah, who already shows signs of becom- 
ing a buff. 



GERALD JONAS 
INTERVIEWING 
HARLAN ELLISON 
AT THE NYCON 




Photo byJ.K. Klein 



158 



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AWARD SCIENCE FICTION READER. 188 
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8-1 

NONE BUT MAN by Gordon R. DIckton. Aliens 
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S-2 

A CASE OF CONSCIENCE by James Bllsh. Two 

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BUG JACK BARRON by Norman Spinrad. Explore 
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S-4A 

THE POLLINATORS OF EDEN by John Boyd. From 
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159 







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THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS by John Wyndhom. For 

an entire day» a small rural village in England 
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all the women, married or not become pregnant, 
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THE SPACE MERCHANTS by Frederik Pehl and 
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S-7 

BRAIN WAVE by Poul Anderson. Imagine, some 
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164 pp. List Price... $4. 50 Discount Price. ..$4.05 



S-8A 

OPUS 100 by lM«c Asimov. An event — a special 
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S-» 

THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW, Robert A. 
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S-10 

THORNS ^ Robert Sllverberg. Duncan Chalk, 
master pain peddler, skillful and sophisticated, 
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I 622. The Founda- 

I tion Trilogy, by 
Isaac Asimov. The 

I ends of the galaxy 
revert to barbarism. 
Pub. ed. $10.50 
I 629. The Illustrated 

I Man.RayBradbury. 
19 stories. "Intense- 
ly real.” N. V. 

I Times. Now a hit 
movie! Pub. ed. 
I $4.50 

630. Ubik. Philip 

I K. Dick. Joe Chip 
was a man from 
1992 — so why was 
I he in 1939? And 
I how could his dead 
I friend talk? Pub. 
ed. $4.50 

600. A Treasury of 
I Great Science Fic- 
I tion. 2-volume set. 
1,000 pages. Counts 
as one book. Pub. 
ed. $5.9$ 




615. Stranger in a 
Strange Land, by 

Robert A. Hein- 
lein. He knew the 
Martian love secret 
—and it spelled his 
doom. Pub. ed.$6.95 
642. Stand on Zan. 
zibar, by John 
Brunner. Extrapo- 
lates today's soci- 
ety into 21st Cen- 
tury. 600 pages. 
Pub. ed. S6.95 



601. 1, Robot, b> 
Isaac Asimov, 
Long out of prim. 
"An enticing thrill- 
er.”-N. Y. Times. 
Pub. ed. $3.50 

618. Dangerous Vi- 
sions. Anthology of 
33 original stories 
never before In 
print by Sturgeon, 
Anderson, others. 
Pub. ed. $6.95 



171. The Fnneo 
File, by Bun Cole. 
Gov’t computer 
baffled by E>eva love 
priestess! -Pub. ed. 
$4.95 



605. Nova, by Sam- 
uel R. Delaney. 
Battle between 
alien worlds — and 
a. desperate .race to 
the sun. Pub. ed. 
$4.95 



627. Last Starship 
From Earth by 
John Boyd. Young 
lovers flee loveless 
society ruled by 
computer "god" 
Pub. ed. $4.95. 



639. Omnivore. 
Piers Anthony. By 
what trick did the 
3 scientists escape 
Nacre when 18 
others failed? 



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